‘Tarrying with the Impossible’: Daniel Stein, Interpreter and the Politics of Translation

Abstract

In this essay I analyse the affirmation of diasporic Jewish identities in Ludmila Ulitskaya's Daniel' Shtainperevodchik (2006) which was translated into English as Daniel Stein, Interpreter (2011). I explore Ulitskaya's 'novel of ideas' as an imaginative contribution to the cognate critical fields of diaspora and translation studies as they affect the discussion of Jewish history, religion and ethics. Daniel Stein, Interpreter won the Russian National Literary Prize in 2007 and was nominated for the Man Booker international prize in 2009. Ulitskaya, its Russian-Jewish author, was awarded the 2011 Prix Simone de Beauvoir, an international human rights prize for women's freedom. She is one of Russia's most prominent post-Soviet authors, with a reputation for democratic social activism advocating reconciliation and social inclusion. Daniel Stein, Interpreter has introduced her work to the English-speaking world.