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This article traces Jhumpa Lahiri's trajectory from writer to (self-)translator from the perspective of multilingualism. I am particularly interested in Lahiri's transition from English to Italian and her return to English, this time as a translator. Indeed, it was not until she began writing in Italian that she became a translator. At the same time, the new language revealed her former bilingualism (English-Bengali). I analyse how Lahiri positions herself as a multilingual poet/translator and how she is positioned through paratexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on literary multilingualism is increasingly based on the assumption that literature per se is multilingual. This is true for concepts such as Mikhail Bakhtin’s ‘polyphony’, in which multilingualism occurs in the form of social, regional and historical variants within one major language. Similarly, it applies to Rainier Grutman’s concept of hétérolinguisme, which expands Bakhtin’s notion and includes actual language changes. Recently, Till Dembeck has even called for a philology of multilingualism that would accommodate literary multilingualism in literary criticism. Using Barbi Marković’s novel Superheldinnen (2016) as an example, I discuss this recent development in multilingual literary studies and analyse concepts, forms and function of literary multilingualism. In so doing, I underline the transcending character of literary multilingualism that expresses itself on various levels: linguistically, formally, medially and with respect to culture. Thus, I aim to illustrate the enormous political potential of literary multilingualism. In fact, multilingualism in literature, as opposed to literature in times of a “monolingual paradigm” (Yasemin Yildiz), poses a political challenge on various levels. Concepts, such as national literature, literary field, but also literary studies and their institutions (i.e. language departments) reach their limits if literature is understood as being multilingual. In the second part of this article, I discuss the difficulties that come with literary prizes, literary studies and the access to the literary field. These often express themselves as concrete problems for individuals who, for instance, have difficulties accessing the literary field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a case study of the aspects of power and attention in literature, and examines both in the context of the German Book Price. This prize has become a powerful marketing tool in the German-speaking world during the last ten years. The creators and organizers of the German Book Prize recognise the importance of attention in literature and have tried to get as many actors as possible involved in prize-related attention: publishers, authors, retailers, the Börsenverein [Book Publishers and Retailers Association] itself, and the many kinds of literary critics. The problem remains that this attention is maximized within certain power structures. So who draws attention in this process and how does it happen? Who has the opportunity, within the framework of the hierarchies of the field, to use this attention or to participate in it? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Postcolonial fiction dealing with the experience of migration often focuses on both the place left behind and the new home. In the case of British fiction, both of these spaces can be islands. This essay concentrates on the novels Small Island (2004) by Andrea Levy, The Final Passage (1985) by Caryl Phillips and Brick Lane (2003) by Monica Ali. In the first two books islands are highly significant, both in terms of the structure of the texts and in terms of the motifs, such as social interactions, colonial past and postcolonial present, climate, food, etc. In Brick Lane the concept of the island as interpretative figure is central. The title of the book refers to an "island" within the city of London, an area mostly populated by Bangladeshi immigrants. In the three novels, we observe a movement away from islands which, in different ways, represents a process of female emancipation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]