Editorial originality and inventiveness in a time of dictatorship: the “Cabra-Cega” series (1968–1973) by Edições Afrodite

Belarus in the XXI century demonstrates a careful and respectful attitude to national literature and culture. The international literary symposium «Writer and Time», which is being held for the seventh year in Minsk during the Minsk International Book Fair, is a platform for exchanging views on topical literary, general civilization issues and is aimed at preserving the spiritual and moral foundations of the development of society and the state. Ethnocultural identity is revealed in the literatures of Belarus and Kazakhstan and the way out into world literature is determined.        The methodology of the article is based on a philological analysis of a literary text in translation. The results of this study are aimed at expanding and deepening the dialogue between the masters of the artistic word of Belarus and Kazakhstan, intensifying literary cooperation, identifying and promoting the most artistically significant works of the two countries. This is undoubtedly facilitated by the functioning of the Internet portal «Consonance: Literature and Journalism of the Commonwealth Countries» (sozvuchie.zviazda.by) based on the publishing house «Zvyazda», which posts new materials about the national literatures of the CIS countries. In the series «Consonance of Hearts» by the publishing house «Zvyazda» a collection of works by Belarusian and Kazakh writers «Knowing No Bounds» has been published, the concept of memory and the modern era are reflected in the published literary texts.        Key words: post-Soviet space, literary translation, criticism, almanac, literary collaboration

This article focuses on the study of phraseological units (PUs), recognized as one of the most complex elements of a literary text. The research material comprises J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series (original English texts) and two Russian translations by teams from ‘Rosman’ and ‘Makhaon’ publishing houses. The aim of the study is to identify the patterns of PU rendition into Russian within these literary texts. The scientific novelty of the study lies in its pioneering comparative analysis of the translation methods for identical PUs across Rowling’s works. The study analyzed 67 English PUs and their counterparts in the two Russian translations of three specific Harry Potter novels: ‘Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban’, ‘Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire’, and ‘Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix’. The results indicate that the analyzed PUs were predominantly rendered into Russian using non-phraseological translation methods, accounting for approximately 67% of all translations examined. Phraseological translation was employed in 24% of cases by the ‘Rosman’ translators and in 31% by ‘Makhaon’ translators. It was found that translators often opted against using direct phraseological equivalents, favoring more neutral or contextually adapted variants. This was not always a translational error but often stemmed from an effort to preserve the author’s intent and the stylistic nuances of the text. Particular attention is paid to analyzing instances where translators employed different methods for rendering identical PUs and to identifying the underlying causes of translation errors in PU rendition.

The article describes Maxim Gorky’s role in the creation of “The Poet’s Library” series. The writer was the organizer and inspirational figure behind the project, but his attitude towards it changed from 1931 to 1936. Various creative, scientific, organizational and political factors influenced the development of the series. Gorky’s personal relationships with the following Leningrad writers — Konstantin Fedin, Ilya Gruzdev, Vissarion Sayanov, Mikhail Slonimsky and Yury Tynyanov — significantly influenced the destiny of the series. In a similar way, Gorky’s relationship with Lev Kamenev, the director of the Academia publishing house, also influenced the series development. Gorky expounded the initial concept of the series in his article “On the Poet’s Library,” which differed significantly from the books of the series published by the Publishing House of Leningrad Writers. In 1934, this created a conflict with the editorial office, which put into question the existence of the series. The innovative approach to the preparation of literary texts and historical and cultural commentary allowed “The Poet’s Library” series to be published throughout the period of over 90 years. The books of the series became the exemplar of mass-scientific publication, and its editorial office became the school of Soviet textual criticism. The article is based on the huge corpus of research on this topic from the 20th and 21st centuries. Furthermore, the article uses materials from the correspondence between Gorky and staff of the publishing house, the Maxim Gorky Archives in Moscow, the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI) and the Central State Archive of Literature and Art of St. Petersburg (TsGALI).

The article describes Maxim Gorky’s role in the creation of the “Poet’s Library” series. The writer was the organizer and inspirational figure behind the project, but his attitude towards it changed from 1931 to 1936. Various creative, scientific, organizational and political factors influenced the development of the series. Gorky’s personal relationships with certain Leningrad writers (Konstantin Fedin, Ilya Gruzdev, Vissarion Sayanov, Mikhail Slonimsky and Yury Tynyanov) significantly influenced the destiny of the series. In a similar way, Gorky’s relationship with Lev Kamenev, the director of the “Academia” publishing house, also influenced the series development. Gorky expounded the initial concept of the series in his article “On the Poet’s Library,” which differed significantly from the books of the series published by the Publishing House of Leningrad Writers. In 1934, this resulted in a conflict with the editorial office, which put into question the existence of the series. An innovative approach to the preparation of literary texts and historical and cultural commentary allowed the “Poet’s Library” series to be published throughout the period of over 90 years. The books of the series became the exemplar of academic mass publication, and its editorial office became the school of Soviet textual criticism. The article is based on the huge corpus of research on this topic from the 20th and 21st centuries. Furthermore, the article uses materials from the correspondence between Gorky and staff of the publishing house, as well as materials from the Maxim Gorky Archive in Moscow, the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI) and the Central State Archive of Literature and Art of St. Petersburg (TsGALI).

There is a trend among Spanish writers to cite authors without specifying the publishing house, the year of the publication or the page number. In essayistic texts, the bibliography may complete the missing data, except for the page number. In literary texts, nevertheless, this information is generally missing. This tendency can be justified by the authors’ intention to renew the reading experience, making it more fluent by clearing away the academic appearance in a novel. The present article compares various translations of Javier Cercas’ Terra Alta including fragments from Les Misérables, with a focus on the presence or the absence of references to their location in the Hugo’s novel. At the end, the analysis will emphasize which of them is more respectful to the French masterpiece, without ignoring the need of a fluid reading experience. Traditionally, a published translation is required to be more rigorous when rendering quotations, that should be taken from an existing translation, with the mandatory specification of the publishing house, the year, the page number and the translator’s name. But when footnotes are missing in the source text, the translator is entitled to act as the author himself. Consequently, this article also brings up questions related to this specific situation: should a translator specify all the details about the insertion, paying tribute to one of his or her peers that translated the quoted book, even if this might affect the reading experience? Or should they ignore the existing translation, if outdated or erroneous, and provide a new one, turning to the indirect translation or to the original text (Hugo’s Les Misérables)? And finally, should the translator specify his or her choices in a footnote or act discreetly, running the risk of being accused of plagiarism?

The German language is currently changing rapidly, perhaps more rapidly than at any other time in its history. Innumerable radio programmes and almost twenty television channels are available in almost every household and extensive use is made of them. Most people own several radios and at least one television set. The sales figures show that the publishing houses are in a state of crisis, while the figures for newspaper sales are also sinking. Listening comes before reading, and speech affects linguistic usage infinitely more than written texts. For centuries, however, standard norms were derived from the written language. Until recently, dictionaries basked in reflected glory by taking their corpus predominantly from literary texts, and illustrating it with passages by distinguished authors of the last two hundred years. There were admittedly a few selected quotations from some of the higher-quality newspapers, but this was merely paying lip service to modern developments, and colloquial language was taboo, even in its spoken form.

During the Soviet period, samizdat (the underground press) was not limited to political or literary texts. Religious samizdat also existed as a significant phenomenon. Believers printed and circulated religious literature for themselves and likeminded people under near-underground conditions, relying on secrecy, concealment, and various informal strategies to evade state control. To shed light on how these practices were organized, the editorial team of the “Orthodoxia” journal spoke with a direct participant in these events, Pavel Rogovoy, who was one of the leading figures of underground Orthodox samizdat in the Soviet era and the general director of the “Palomnik” publishing house

The urge to adjust curricular and pedagogical contents of what texts of literature teach to learners of a foreign language, notably English, implies an understanding of the concept of global literary canon. Global or world literature then entails a literature that does not abide by the rigidity of the borders, which imprison texts within the local confinements of national identity traits. It is rather a process which allows the circulation of texts across national borders for the purpose of forming one huge hybrid culture that mixes various literary flavors. In an era of globalization and while the very notion of Western canon seems obsolete and out dated, there still exists some sort of discrimination among the texts allowed to enter the global literary canon. Some literary texts are considered not exotic enough or too exotic to meet the expectations of a wide and translational readership. For that reason, a great number of texts is deliberately marginalized and dropped from the canon confirming then the Western monopole operating upon the marketing and publishing houses. In this view of things, the present paper addresses the particular status of the Algerian literature in French within the global literary canon. It, also, aims to analyze its resistance to translation as major obstacle to its circulation and, thus, invisibility.

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size This investigation was supported by the University of Kansas General Research Fund allocation #2301127-003. Revisions were supported in part by a Fellowship from the University of Kansas Hall Center for the Humanities. Notes Very recent U.S. Latina/o novels, such as those by Cristina García and Junot Díaz, move increasingly away from this paradigm. For an extended discussion of how U.S. Latino/a writers have (or more often, have not) dealt with the notion of a "Latino" identity that encompasses various national-origin groups, see my book, On Latinidad. The relative dearth until quite recently of U.S.-Central American literary texts that have seen print through U.S. publishing houses is not synonymous with an absence of literary production by U.S. Central Americans. A Central American presence in the United States dates back to the early twentieth century, linked to U.S. investment in the Salvadoran coffee trade and to the dominance of the United Fruit Company in banana production (Hamilton and Stoltz Chinchilla 23–25). New Orleans is home to one of the oldest and largest communities of Honduran Americans in the United States; it has also historically been a site of Spanish literary activity in the United States through Spanish-language journals and newspapers (Lima 354, 358). However, the booming popular and academic market for Latino/a literary texts within the last two decades or so has dramatically increased publishing venues and opportunities for U.S.-Central American letters. Arias identifies The Tattooed Soldier as the "first novel written in English by a Guatemalan-American author" (169), although that distinction might more properly go to Goldman's earlier novel The Long Night of White Chickens (1992), depending on whom we decide to "count" as a Guatemalan American author. Goldman was born in New York in 1954; his mother was Guatemalan, his father Jewish American. Tobar, like Goldman, was born in the United States—in his case, to parents who both immigrated from Guatemala in 1962. According to Tobar's own autobiographical account in Translation Nation, his mother was already pregnant with him at the time (4). As Marcelo Suárez-Orozco and Mariela Páez have put it, "Latinos are made in the USA" (4; see also Jones-Correa and Leal 229). Of course, Mexican immigrants and Puerto Ricans living in the continental United States are themselves largely separated by citizenship rights. In one telling illustration of the problems and tensions concealed by panethnic labels like "Latino," some advocacy groups were reportedly angered and frustrated by the results of the 2000 census, in which specific Central American populations in U.S. cities were underreported (Barreto 39–40, 45–47). Matt Barreto, noting that Salvadorans and Guatemalans were two of the most under-counted groups, has explained: "Changes in the census form have potentially resulted in less recognition and fewer resources for specific Latino communities living in the United States…. The political implications of misidentification are clear for advocacy organizations and city planning departments" (40, 47). What such controversy underscores is the point that different Latino immigrant groups have different needs, which cannot simply be addressed by "counting" them all as "Latinos." See, for example, the discussion of historically Mexican and Puerto Rican neighborhoods in Chicago in Felix Padilla's Latino Ethnic Consciousness (20–22, 40–42). As De Genova and Ramos-Zayas have written more recently of these neighborhoods, "In Chicago, one of the most racially segregated cities in the U.S., ubiquitous distinctions about 'neighborhoods' are virtually inseparable from their…racial and also class-inflected meanings…. [T]he mere mention of 'Humboldt Park' signaled…a particularly stigmatized image of 'Puerto Rican'-ness, associated with criminality, poverty, and 'welfare dependency'…. Similarly, a simple reference to '26th Street' could automatically trigger discourses about Mexican 'illegal aliens' or 'gangs'" (32). As the authors point out, these associations held true even in the minds of Mexicans (about Puerto Ricans), and vice versa, suggesting the degree to which "ethnic enclaves" do not automatically signal the spacial grounds for panethnic identity formation or for incorporation of diverse "Latino" groups. Juan Gonzalez has emphasized differences between the "stable ethnic enclaves" of prior generations of Latinos and the new influx of Central Americans in the 1980s and 1990s (140). As Hamilton and Stoltz Chinchilla note in Seeking Community in a Global City: Guatemalans and Salvadorans in Los Angeles, the 1980s saw a dramatic upswing in Salvadoran and Guatemalan emigration, while the economic crisis in Mexico made it an increasingly difficult endpoint for that migration flow (33). The Salvadoran population in the United States rose by more than 500 percent between 1980 and 1990 (Menjívar 6). In 2005, the percentage of Latinos in the United States who were of Central American descent had risen to 7.5 percent, exceeding the percentage of Latinos who were Cuban (3.5%) or Dominican (2.7%) (Pew Hispanic Center, Table 3); the estimated number of unauthorized Central American migrants residing in the United States was almost 1.4 million (Passel 6). Alejandro Portes elaborates that members of transnational communities "are at least bilingual, move easily between different cultures, frequently maintain homes in two countries, and pursue economic, political, and cultural interests that require a simultaneous presence in both" (76). Indeed, Inderpal Grewal has argued in Transnational America that, rather than "focusing on the mobility and immobility of people as the key to identity formation at the end of the twentieth century," we should instead recognize that under the conditions of globalization, "those who stayed in one place were just as much transformed by transnational formations as those who moved" (36). See also Escobar, Levitt, and Waters; McClennen 48. This concept of transnationalism, it should be noted, is at odds with a different model that sees transnationalism as virtually synonymous with "postnationalism," a conceptionalization of the "global order in which the nation-state has become obsolete and other formations for allegiance and identity have taken its place" (Appadurai 169). It would seem a huge leap, however, from the observation that "the nation-state is by no means the only game in town as far as translocal loyalties are concerned" (Appadurai 165) to the argument that it is no longer significantly operative at all (or is on the way to being so) in the formation of loyalties. The latter is increasingly an untenable position in the face of fierce, re-emergent nativism in the United States and the high level of emotionality attached to current rhetoric of reinforcing national borders. In a fascinating study, Michael Jones-Correa and David Leal report that the likelihood of panethnic self-identification (i.e., the use of a term such as "Hispanic" or "Latino" to self-identify) increases by generation; that is, 3rd generation U.S. Latinos/as are more likely to self-identify as "Hispanic" or "Latino" than the 1st or 2nd generation. By contrast, recent immigrants, such as the newer waves of Central Americans, are much more likely to identify by national origin. I borrow and adapt my use of the term "contact zones," of course, from Mary Louise Pratt's Imperial Eyes, where she uses it with reference to "colonial encounters": the term "refer[s] to the space…in which peoples geographically and historically separated come into contact with each other and establish ongoing relations" (6). Several critics have referred, in passing, to lingering allegiances and commitments to family and home country politics as "baggage," finding this an appropriate metaphor for the affective content that they bring with them in their migratory "travels" to their new context. See Castillo 8; Rodriguez 401; Arias 170. See, for instance, Allatson's discussion of the two terms. Dávila cites figures from Strategy Research Corporation's 1998 U.S. Hispanic Market Study. Puerto Ricans, once the largest Latino group in New York by far, represented only 43 percent of New York Latinos by 1998 (Dávila 19). Of course Los Angeles too has seen a growing diversification of its Latino population, and Central American influx to New York, as to Los Angeles, has increased rapidly over the last two decades (Dávila 19). But the primary Central American destination in the United States has been Southern California, where "the concepts of 'Latino' and 'Hispanic' had long been identified with Mexicans and Mexican Americans" whose presence in the region dated prior to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 and whose migration patterns north were much more firmly established. Interactions between rooted Mexican American communities and the newly arrived Central Americans were "sometimes friendly and cooperative, [but] sometimes contentious" and marked by inter-group resentments (Hamilton and Stolz Chinchilla 33, 53, 56). As Davis writes of the 1992 L.A. riots, "only a third of the 'rioters' incarcerated were Black." Needless to say, New York has also seen its fair share of racial rioting, including the Harlem Riot of 1935 and the Crown Heights Riot of 1991. These riots, however, have been characterized in the U.S. imagination primarily in terms of black–white or black–Jewish tensions, rather than as inclusive of tensions involving Latinos. Consider, for instance, Helena María Viramontes's rendering of this paradox in her novel of migrant farmworkers, Under the Feet of Jesus. In one passage of the novel, two adolescent laborers discuss the concept of being "stuck." You know where oil comes from?…If we don't have oil, we don't have gasoline. Good. We'd stay put then. Stuck, more like it. Stuck. Aren't we now? (86) Estrella, the novel's protagonist, recognizes that mobility across space in no way guarantees social mobility—in fact, the economically-forced mobility of the migrants' lives (they must follow the crop harvests in order to scrape a living) is one characteristic of their being "stuck." This meditation would seem to rub against Rodriguez's claim that the characters' political differences are momentarily "suspended" (406); rather, the thrust of such passages is to suggest that those differences might never have been all that pronounced to begin with. See, for example, Rumbaut 75. For an excellent article on this aspect of the 1992 Los Angeles Riots, see Davis. Additional informationNotes on contributorsMarta Caminero-SantangeloMarta Caminero-Santangelo is Professor and Chair of the English Department at the University of Kansas. She is the author of On Latinidad: US Latino Literature and the Construction of Ethnicity and The Madwoman Can't Speak: Or Why Insanity is Not Subversive.

The urge to adjust curricular and pedagogical contents of what texts of literature teach to learners of a foreign language, notably English, implies an understanding of the concept of global literary canon. Global or world literature then entails a literature that does not abide by the rigidity of the borders, which imprison texts within the local confinements of national identity traits. It is rather a process which allows the circulation of texts across national borders for the purpose of forming one huge hybrid culture that mixes various literary flavors. In an era of globalization and while the very notion of Western canon seems obsolete and out dated, there still exists some sort of discrimination among the texts allowed to enter the global literary canon. Some literary texts are considered not exotic enough or too exotic to meet the expectations of a wide and translational readership. For that reason, a great number of texts is deliberately marginalized and dropped from the canon confirming then the Western monopole operating upon the marketing and publishing houses. In this view of things, the present paper addresses the particular status of the Algerian literature in French within the global literary canon. It, also, aims to analyze its resistance to translation as major obstacle to its circulation and, thus, invisibility.

Adolescence is a critical period, a period of change from childhood to adulthood, as well as the start of exploration of matters related to sexuality and romance. There are many reproductive health problems that occur in adolescents which are related to sexual behavior. There are many reproductive health problems that occur in adolescents which are related to sexual behavior. Based on the results of the Indian Health Demographic Survey on teenanger in 2018, it can be seen that only 33% and 37% of women and men know about the fertile period. The aim of the activity is to increase adolescent knowledge regarding reproductive health. As for the activities carried out in the form of counseling and assistance to teenager, village government. The result of this activity is that there is an increase in teenager knowledge about reproductive health at the point that there is an increase in knowledge about reproductive health at the adolescent age limit point, the reasons for teenangers are important for reproductive health education, diseases caused by sexual intercourse in adolescence, age of marriage for women, reasons for sexual relations pre-marriage and the impact of premarital sex on society. Through this activity, it is suggested that the provision of reproductive health information can be carried out continuously to teenager

Background: Infertility is on the rise across the India. We aim to asses fertility awareness scores in Indian population and factors influencing it. Prospective cross sectional study. Materials and Methods: The sub fertile women who attended OPD and consented for interview were given a questionnaire. The questions contained 14 questions on natural fertility factors (6 questions), risk factors for infertility (3 questions), and regarding treatment and misconceptions related to infertility (5 questions). The total scores were calculated. Scores were correlated with source of information, Socioeconomic status and other demographic factors. Standard deviation or mean were used for Quantitative variables. Categorical data, was analysed using Pearson’s Chi-square test. Results: A total of 209 women participated in the study. The overall Fertility Awareness level was good in 82 (39.2%) and poor in 127 (60.8%) study participants. The scores were better in urban and younger than thirty. There was positive linear association with education status of the women ( P value < 0.001). It was seen that awareness levels of women of upper and middle class was statistically significantly better than lower class ( P value – 0.03). The women who talked to medical person had better knowledge about fertile period and assisted reproductive techniques. Conclusion: There is poor awareness about sub fertility causes and available treatment options in Indian population. The people who contact medical personnel timely for it are better aware. There is a need to integrate fertility knowledge in education system and government programmes.

Reviewed by: Beyond Empire and Nation: Postnational Arguments in the Fiction of Nuruddin Farah and B. Kojo Laing Julia Praud Beyond Empire and Nation: Postnational Arguments in the Fiction of Nuruddin Farah and B. Kojo Laing By Francis Ngaboh-Smart Cross/Cultures 70. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004. xxi + 168 pp. ISBN 90-420-0970-5 paper. Intelligent and innovative, Beyond Empire and Nation, Francis Ngaboh-Smart's examination of growing antinationalist sentiment in African literature, succeeds in its endeavor to offer an understanding of the literary repercussions caused when the conceptual framework provided by nation and nationalism is contested in its meaning. To this end, Ngaboh-Smart explores questions of "flexible identity, multiple citizenship, transnationality, and the reimagining of nationalist myths and values" through selected works by Somali author Nuruddin Farah and by Ghanaian author B. Kojo Laing (ix). While he does concede that "mobility and cross-cultural contacts have always been part of the African experience," Ngaboh-Smart maintains that one consequence of the current backlash against nationalism has been an overemphasis by contemporary African writers on the importance of "migration, displacement, relocation and the formation of new habits as strategies of positioning and self-definition" (ix). For him, the heart of the problem lies in the on-going critique of the nation and nationalism in which he has identified a "failure to differentiate among various forms of nationalist projects" (xii). Drawing on Timothy Brennan's contention "that an uncritical condemnation of nationalism demonstrates a 'European lapse of memory'" capable of confounding the imperial nationalisms of Europe (specifically those of Italy, Germany, and Japan, characterized by "extreme group loyalties" and "repressive regimes") with the "anti-imperial nationalisms of the Third World," Ngaboh-Smart extends this "lapse" to "African and Third World intellectuals" who challenge "the optimism and euphoria of nationalist discourse," focusing their attention solely on, as Anderson has said, "the near-pathological character of nationalism, its roots in fear and hatred of other, and its affinities with racism" (xiii). It is from this perspective that Ngaboh-Smart incisively analyzes Farah's and Laing's novels. Contending that "the postnational is a form of politics that is best approached by looking at concrete political and social regimes in which it is embedded and articulated," he thoroughly situates both author and œuvre within the relevant socio-economic and political framework (xv). Notable for the depth and breadth of each analysis, this work challenges the status quo and is particularly bold in its treatment of two novels. The first, Secrets, the third novel in Farah's Blood in the Sun trilogy, courageously works through and pushes past the shock of the novel's sexually explicit content and scatological elements, in order to demonstrate the utility and necessity of such material to Farah's message: the questioning of cultural norms and the possibility of redefining nationhood. The second, B. Kojo Laing's Major Gentl and the Achimota Wars, similarly moves beyond the limits of conventional literary analysis to see the coherent, even necessary, role of Laing's unconventional use of language. As Ngaboh-Smart points out, "there is ample evidence to show that the novel's 'linguistic acrobatics' does not only successfully or capably carry the work's message, but that it [End Page 130] is also a genuine attempt to capture the non-naturalistic world of the narrative" (135). Finally, Ngaboh-Smart raises valuable questions about hybridity, drawing out flaws in its rhetoric through his analysis of Calixthe Beyala's novel Your Name Shall Be Tanga. In the end, Ngaboh-Smart does not deny the existence of subjectivities that refuse to be bound by national borders (i.e., refugees, exiles), but he remains unconvinced that their existence heralds the decline of the nation-state and the imminent demise of nationalism. Despite an apparent lack of "closure" in African literature vis-à-vis nationalism and its nations, Ngaboh-Smart foresees a continued disdain for "nationalist solutions," even though, as he reminds us in his conclusion, "whether we like it or not the achievement of nationalism, the nation, is still with us" (154). Julia Praud The Ohio State University Copyright © 2005 The Indiana University Press

Reviewed by: The Typographic Imagination: Reading and Writing in Japan's Age of Modern Print Media by Nathan Shockey Seth Jacobowitz The Typographic Imagination: Reading and Writing in Japan's Age of Modern Print Media. By Nathan Shockey. Columbia University Press, 2020. 336 pages. ISBN: 9780231194280 (hardcover; also available as e-book). Nathan Shockey's The Typographic Imagination makes the latest contribution to studies of modern print culture in Japan by exploring how a new regime of reading, writing, and thinking was inaugurated at the dawn of mass culture (1890s–1930s) through widely affordable and available books and magazines. In many respects, this is a meticulous work of scholarship, brimming with a wealth of analytical and anecdotal perspectives about the state actors, publishers, intellectuals, and writers who, in Shockey's formulation, understood typographic print to be "a powerful heuristic means and method for their efforts to reconstruct the modern world, regardless of ideological orientation" (p. 3). In contrast to earlier research publications that emphasized the linkages between the rise of a new vernacular language and realist literature for the conception of modern subjectivity, Shockey insists upon recognizing the commodification of mass-produced print matter as a material basis for rethinking the marketplace of ideas and social relations. The book is divided into two parts, each consisting of three chapters. Part 1 sets the frame for the supersession of existing xylographic forms by typographic book and magazine publishing, which shepherded knowledge production, dissemination, and lively debate to a newly constituted national audience. Shockey is at his finest weaving together a seamless account of how three of the leading publishing houses—Hakubunkan, Iwanami, and Kōdansha—delivered print to the masses as what he calls a "staple commodity" (p. 5). Part 2 shifts gears to assess a handful of topics within a still-evolving media ecology through a close reading of avant-gardist literary theory and texts by Yokomitsu Riichi and the Shinkankaku-ha (Neo-Perceptionists); a survey of orthographic reform, Romanization, and Esperanto movements as Japan grappled with script as a "fundamental, atomistic building block of consciousness" (p. 159); and lastly, a study of how Marxist thinkers and Communist activists worked through the medium of print capitalism despite the hostility of the imperial state. [End Page 145] In his introduction, Shockey defines his three-part methodology drawn from the Toronto school of communications theory of Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan; histories of the Western book by Elizabeth Eisenstein, Adrian Johns, and Roger Chartier; and work on modern literature and media studies by a dozen or so figures based in Japan, including, most prominently, Kōno Kensuke, Hyōdō Hiromi, Suzuki Sadami, Komori Yōichi, Nagamine Shigetoshi, and Toeda Hirokazu. Inexplicably lost somewhere along the way, however, is the lion's share of recent American scholarship on modern Japanese literature and print culture in English, which Shockey only glancingly signals. This odd maneuver diminishes the ability of The Typographic Imagination to participate in a larger conversation. In actual practice, the "typographic imagination" appears closer to a sociology of print culture consistent with Pierre Bourdieu's notion of socially ingrained skills, dispositions, and behavioral patterns. Shockey combines Bourdieu's habitus with Harry Harootunian's call in Overcome by Modernity (Princeton University Press, 2000) to investigate everyday life under the conditions of mass culture: "This book explores the habituation of modern forms of reading and writing in Japan from the last years of the nineteenth century through the first decades of the twentieth as the rapid growth of the typographic publishing industry made mass-produced print media an inexorable part of everyday life" (p. 2). Curiously, neither Bourdieu nor Harootunian are mentioned in this volume. They are simply included in the bibliography, as are the American Japanologists. Harootunian's emphasis on everyday life under the conditions of mass culture took cues not only from thinkers of the Frankfurt and Chicago schools, but also from the groundbreaking work of prewar Japanese sociologists (Kon Wajirō, Gonda Yasunosuke), Marxist intellectuals (Tosaka Jun, Hirabayashi Hatsunosuke), and detective fiction writers (Edogawa Ranpo). Shockey, conversely, ascribes historical agency to mostly top-down accounts of actions by the state, major publishing houses, and literary elites such as Kawabata Yasunari and Yokomitsu...

Reviewed by: Francophone Voices of the “New” Morocco in Film and Print: (Re)presenting a Society in Transition Katarzyna Pieprzak Francophone Voices of the “New” Morocco in Film and Print: (Re)presenting a Society in Transition Valérie K. Orlando New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Valérie Orlando’s book presents voices from contemporary literature and film that are rarely engaged outside of Morocco. In introducing, summarizing, and analyzing these often fascinating texts, Orlando also presents vivid visions of post-Hassan II Moroccan society and the challenges it faces. Perhaps the most important part of this book is its very idea—that works of fiction written in Morocco and published by small local publishing houses deserve and require critical attention. Firstly, this is a most welcome departure from the focus on canonic North African francophone writers that still often exists in American and French universities. In its treatment of authors such as Rida Lamrini, Touria Oulehri, Fatna El Bouih, Abdellah Taïa, Fouad Laroui, and Youssef Elalamy, the book joins a corpus of critical work that is interested in Moroccan francophone literature beyond Tahar Ben Jelloun. Secondly, the book counters a discourse of prestige politics often reproduced in Morocco that claims that local publishing houses are vanity presses, and that Parisian publishers set the mark of quality and taste. Orlando’s book demonstrates how small publishing houses produce timely and sometimes exquisite work that, free of the encouraged exoticism from the French publishing world, can serve as “an imperative link to future debates on reform, modernity, and cultural transitions” (xvi). In the introduction, Orlando presents a useful history of three generations of francophone writing in Morocco in order to contextualize the third and most recent generation that the book primarily addresses. This third generation, she argues, has broken with nationalist discourse in order to articulate relationships between the marginalized individual and on-going transformations in contemporary Moroccan society (14). Orlando’s approach throughout the book is to show how these third-generation authors function as activists, producing literary and filmic texts that engage contemporary societal debates about gender, political reform, human rights abuse, and, more generally, the role of the individual in the future of the country: “The Moroccan author and/or journalist (some are both) rarely writes without some connection to a sociocultural project that s/he hopes will alter the way citizens think about the ongoing sociopolitical and cultural developments taking place in the country” (130–31). In this light, Orlando devotes significant attention to the work of writers invested in giving voice to and [End Page 197] remembering the abuses of the Lead Years in Morocco, and to works that map the transformations of gender and sexuality in the country. She also presents a chapter on writers who articulate a new humanism that surpasses the nation’s borders. While Orlando draws on Moroccan literary criticism in her presentation of recent works, surprisingly the main theoretical reference point in her discussion of activism and humanism throughout the book is Jean-Paul Sartre. While Sartre’s “engaged public intellectual” may work for the book, it is a choice that requires some justification, considering the numerous models of engaged intellectuals that exist in an African context. In this regard Orlando’s book is symptomatic of francophone studies in general where the theoretical apparatus is too often routed through French theory and literature, and sustained engagement with interdisciplinary African studies or recent theory emerging from anthropology and cultural studies is regrettably absent. While the wide scope of the book doesn not allow for extensive engagement with each work or its aesthetic choices, Orlando succeeds in documenting how recent fiction and film represent contemporary issues in Moroccan society, and in this regard, provides a valuable roadmap to post-1999 Moroccan cultural production. Katarzyna Pieprzak Williams College kpieprza@williams.edu Copyright © 2011 Indiana University Press