Inspired by the methodological framework of “histoire croisée”, this paper examines the bibliomigrancy of the French Caribbean author Maryse Condé. To this end, four major causal series of events leading up to her nomination and selection for the 2018 Alternative Nobel Prize in Literature are analyzed. The first causal series of events consists of the translation bibliomigrancy of French Caribbean fiction to Sweden during the past 40 years. The second causal series of events briefly covers the authorship of Maryse Condé and her reception in Sweden. The third causal series follows the effects and repercussions of the cancellation of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2018, as well as the particular consequences concerning the reorganization of the Royal Swedish Academy. The fourth causal series of events entails the foundation of the “New Academy” and the Alternative Nobel Prize in Literature. Closing remarks discuss Maryse Condé’s chances of being awarded the regular Nobel Prize in Literature. 

It is well known that the Swedish literary culture is open and that the most common overall translation strategy for high prestige fiction is adequate, in the Toury sense (2012 p. 70). But are there different degrees of adequacy? And do translators favor vernacular or cosmopolitan stances in their overall adequate translations? Are there any signs of commercial vernacular­ ism on the cover of the studied Caribbean novels translated from English, French and English/ Spanish?

By employing the transformations reduction, substitution and retention, the results of the study show that retention is by far the most used transformation by the Swedish publishers and translators, concerning both the paratexts and translated texts. Commercial vernacularism is detectable on the covers. However, the strength of retention varies within the overall adequate translations; from an adequate translation conforming to Swedish expectancy norms for trans­ lated high prestige fiction, which is employed by the translator of the novel Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid, over a foreignizing translation strategy reminding the reader of the presence of the culturally Other, used by the translator of Maryse Condé’s novel Traversée de la mangrove, to the abusive fidelity translation challenging the tolerant Swedish reader’s expectancy norms and translation ethics reading the translation of The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz. The study shows that there are three nuances of adequacy in the studied material.

This open access book uses Swedish literature and the Swedish publishing field as recurring examples to describe and analyse the role of the literary semi-peripheral position in world literature from various perspectives and on meso, micro and macro levels, using both quantitative and qualitative methods. This includes the role of translation in the semi-periphery and the conditions under which literature travels to and from that position. The focus is not on Sweden, as such, but rather on the semi-peripheral transitional space as exemplified by the Swedish case.

Consisting of three co-written chapters, this study sheds light on what might be called the semi-peripheral condition or the semi-periphery as an area of transition. As part of the Cosmopolitan and Vernacular Dynamics in World Literatures series, it makes continuous use of the concepts of 'cosmopolitan' and 'vernacular' – or rather, the processual terms, cosmopolitanization and vernacularization – which provide an overall structure to the analysis of literature and literary phenomena. In this way, the authors show that the semi-periphery is an ideal point of departure to further the understanding of world literature, because it is a place where the cosmopolitan (the literary universal) and the vernacular (the rootedness in a particular culture or place) interact in ways that have not yet been thoroughly explored.

This paper examines consecration mechanisms contributing to translation taking place from one local periphery in the global translation field, notably from French Caribbean literature, to another (semi-) periphery, Swedish literature. The translation bibliomigrancy of Dany Laferrière, Maryse Condé and Patrick Chamoiseau is mapped out and tested against the Double Consecration Hypothesis, which states that writers from peripheral cultures, to be selected for translation into Swedish, have primarily to be consecrated within the center of their previous (colonial) culture in the global translation field and then within the centers of the British and American literary cultures. It is shown that double consecration constitutes a favorable condition for the peripheral writers studied to reach Swedish readers in translation. However, the success of these writers within Swedish literary culture heavily depends on their consecration within the Anglo-American culture, on the prestige of the publishing houses and on the involved translators’ possession of translation capital.

The aim of the article Bibliomigration from Periphery to (Semi)Periphery is threefold: firstly to describe the bibliomigration patterns of the Contemporary Spanish Caribbean Literature to Sweden, secondly to test the Double Consecration Hypothesis, and thirdly to discuss the importance of translation in relation to World Literature. The material studied consists of 25 novels written by 15 Spanish Caribbean authors from Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic translated into Swedish during the period 1990–2015. The consecration processes of the involved cosmopolitan intermediaries in the study are reconstructed in order to map out the bibliomigration. It was brought to light that the Spanish literary consecration culture is pluri-centric and the Anglo American duo-centric, which ultimately affect the bibliomigration patterns to Sweden. Three patterns were discovered: One for Spanish Caribbean authors who writes in Spanish, one for Spanish Caribbean authors writing in English and one for literature written in Spanish, published in Spanish in Sweden and then translated into Swedish. In the first case nine out of then novels verified the Double Consecration Hypothesis. Hence it seems that Spanish Caribbean literature written in Spanish have to be consecrated primarily within the Spanish colonial and postcolonial literary centers and then within the American and British consecration centers in order to be selected for translation into Swedish. In the second case ten out of the 25 Spanish Caribbean novels were written in English, and thus not in need for double consecration to reach Sweden. In the last pattern consecration is local rather than cosmopolitan.

The chapter “Translation Bibliomigrancy” presents the theoretical framework for the study of the meeting of Caribbean and Scandinavian literature by means of translation. Bibliomigrancy, i.e. the dynamics of cosmopolitanising and vernacularising translation processes in world literatures, is a central concept in the study as well as The Double Consecration Hypothesis, according to which this literature needs to be consecrated primarily within respective dominant literary centre(s), and secondly within the Anglo-American literary culture before agents in Scandinavia consider a translation into the Scandinavian languages. Contending that translation is a form of literary consecration the study traces translations from the Caribbean French, English and Spanish languages to the Scandinavian Swedish, Danish and Norwegian languages during the period 1990–2010. Given the construction of the studied literary consecration cultures (mono-, duo- or pluri-centric), bibliomigrancy to the Scandinavian periphery will evince differentiated characteristics. The chapter discusses how cosmopolitanising and vernacularising translation dynamics influence bibliomigrancy and the hypothesised double consecration in the Scandinavian context.

Placing itself within the burgeoning field of world literary studies, the organising principle of this book is that of an open-ended dynamic, namely the cosmopolitan-vernacular exchange.

As an adaptable comparative fulcrum for literary studies, the notion of the cosmopolitan-vernacular exchange accommodates also highly localised literatures. In this way, it redresses what has repeatedly been identified as a weakness of the world literature paradigm, namely the one-sided focus on literature that accumulates global prestige or makes it on the Euro-American book market.

How has the vernacular been defined historically? How is it inflected by gender? How are the poles of the vernacular and the cosmopolitan distributed spatially or stylistically in literary narratives? How are cosmopolitan domains of literature incorporated in local literary communities? What are the effects of translation on the encoding of vernacular and cosmopolitan values?

Ranging across a dozen languages and literature from five continents, these are some of the questions that the contributions attempt to address.