On Translated Literature’s Intended Reader(s): The Case of Yoram Kaniuk’s The Last Berliner

Abstract

Abstract This article examines the position of the implied reader within a narrative communication model of translated texts, through the unique case study of Yoram Kaniuk’s The Last Berliner (2002/2004). While offering a comparative analysis of the book’s commercial presentation and critical reception in source and translation, the discussion analyzes ways in which national motivations and tones are translated (or re-located) into a different national and cultural setting. These in turn shape and reflect the text’s notion of its implied reader, which is further complicated by the fact that The Last Berliner was translated and published in German two years prior to its publication in Hebrew. It seems, then, that the book constructs two antithetical implied readers, which correspond to its different motivations in German and in Hebrew. Thus, the article takes the movement between the two cultures and languages as its point of departure, and sets to explore the tensions between the two cultural-political spheres through the notion of the intended reader and its realizations in the text’s critical reception.