100 books like Islam Translated

I studied at Tel Aviv University, where the name Gideon Toury was uttered in reverent tones. I never met Toury in person, and it was only towards my graduation that I finally got around to reading this iconic book.

To say that it is a smooth or engaging read would be a gross misrepresentation. Toury was a devout structuralist and a firm believer in the importance of scientific inquiry in the humanities. Accordingly, this is a book one reads in a staggered mode, one dense section at a time. This makes for an unusual reading experience, but there is something addictive about it, especially for contemporary readers.

We have grown so distant from this kind of extreme positivism, this undaunting belief in the possibility of unbiased scholarship, that for a brief moment, the numerous charts, formulas, and abbreviations that adorn the pages of Toury’s book seem almost amusing. But this… show more.

If I had to name one book that is almost the exact opposite of Toury’s, it is this one. Venuti’s book is the rare kind of scholarly book one reads over one or two sittings. It is angry, provocative, polemical, and just pure fun.

For Venuti, there is no separating fact from value, and whether it plans to or not, translation (and scholarship on translation) affects change in both text and world—often for the worst. If Toury’s book emulated scientific discourse, Venuti’s reads like a crossover between a political manifesto and a crime novel. Translation is a violent business, shrouded in suspicion and hidden agendas, that need to be exposed through symptomatic readings and critical analyses.

The book ends with a passionate call to action enlisting translators—despite the risks entailed therein—to develop new methodologies that will, as Venuti writes: “make a difference, not only at home [. . .] but… show more.

In 1893 the eminent scholar of Jewish studies, Moritz Steinschneider, astutely identified Jews as “Dolmetscher”— mediators between East and West, Christianity and Islam, ancient and modern languages. While early academic interest in Jewish translation primarily focused on the Middle Ages, the past two decades have seen a burgeoning fascination with translation across other periods (and spaces) of Jewish history.

Several outstanding books have emerged by literary historians such as Abigail Gillman, Aya Elyada, Tessa Rajak, and Omri Asscher, making it challenging to single out just one recommendation. But Naomi Seidman’s book had me hooked from page 1, where Seidman recounts the story of her father’s strategic mistranslation between Yiddish and French in Post-War Paris. For Seidman, whose brilliant analysis of this translation narrative offers one of the best introductions to an academic book I’ve read, such strategic mistranslations are emblematic of the complexities of Jewish-Christian dialogue and of the Jewish… show more.

Not strictly centered on translation and not exactly a conventional book, this collection of essays is often considered the birthplace of the now widely-used (though often misunderstood) concept of “cultural translation.”

Bhabha is a notoriously demanding author, and reading this book can, at times, feel like entering a conversation already in progress. Bhabha will move from Salman Rushdie, through Joseph Conrad or Walter Benjamin, to Fredric Jameson and Jacques Derrida, often within the space of a single paragraph or page. But Bhabha’s intellectual rigour justifies the effort. This challenging but rewarding book unleashes the radical potential of translation studies.

For Bhabha, translation transcends mere linguistic or even cultural exchange to become a tool for grappling with cultural transformation and difference more generally. It is a way of thinking about resistance and religion, innovation and imitation, politics and power. This book was love at first sight for me, and although I… show more.

This is an extremely fine book that traces and discusses the origins or intellectual roots of Islamic renewal and reformism in Indonesia (and the Malay world in general). What makes this book special is that, among others, the author used rare academic sources (e.g., Arabic biographic dictionaries that have never before been analyzed or utilized as research materials) to reconstruct the history of Indonesia’s Islamic reformism. The book shows that an orthodox form of Islam in Southeast Asia was the product of intellectual and religious networks between Muslim societies in the archipelago and the Malay-Indonesian Islamic scholars in the Haramain (Mecca and Medina) who transmitted Islamic scholarships, knowledge, and discourses to them since the seventeenth century. 

This book studies the historical dynamics of the Hadrami Yemeni diaspora in Arabia, India, and Southeast Asia. The Hadramis, especially progenies of Prophet Muhammad, have settled in these three regions for centuries but academic work that discusses the origins of their presence and transnational movement across the Indian Ocean is extremely rare. Professor Ho is a brilliant anthropologist and historian. I, in particular, like the ways he vividly utilizes and interprets various sources–biographies, family histories, chronicles, pilgrimage manuals, and religious law – to reconstruct the history of the diasporic Hadrami community from Arabia to Southeast Asia. 

Again, it’s Agnes Keith, but this time using her gentle voice to describe the trials that she, her husband, and their son and their neighbors and friends endured during their stays in Japanese World War II prison camps in tropical Borneo. One critic wonderingly comments about this book that it “records but never renders pain, observes human nature but never attacks any individual” and concludes “the author’s writing is restrained and touching.”

Two prominent aspects of China’s recent economic development are its mushrooming network of high-speed rail and its efforts to encourage infrastructure in its neighbors and beyond through the Belt and Road Initiative. The careful research of this book brings the two together. In exploring the different attitudes toward China among its southern neighbors the authors give a concrete account of how involvement is shaped by the prospects, concerns, and politics of each country. Meanwhile, it is clear that China is achieving a new centrality and connectivity in mainland Asia. What remains to be seen is whether a connected Asia is also a unified one.

Norman Lewis is best known for his non-fiction works such as The Golden Land (about Burma) and A Dragon Apparent (about Vietnam). Yet he also wrote a dozen novels that show a great flair for characterisation, dialogue and plot pacing, in addition to his incisive descriptions. A Single Pilgrim tells the story of John Crane, manager of a teak logging company in North Thailand, who revels in “the voluptuousness of routine and civilized triviality”. However, his company’s leases are about to expire and the thought of an end to his Oriental idyll is more than Crane can bear.

Lost, confused, and feeling the victim, Ethan visits Thailand. He falls down a sinkhole into an alternate reality. Even more lost among really weird people, feeling even more confused and victimized, he learns the true meaning of life. But can he get back to live his real life?

Who hasn’t tumbled into Ethan’s emotions? We go along thinking we’re doing good and suddenly the worst happens. We didn’t deserve any of it yet we’re stuck alone and destitute in it.

Ethan meets an archaeologist who introduces him to indigenous people and their ghost stories. I love cultural studies, sociology,  archaeology, anthropology, and linguistics, all sciences represented in this story. Reality gets smudged and blurred, but love, loyalty, and forgiveness remain true and unshaken in this beautiful story of redemption.