In the post-Cold War, post-9/11 era, the immigrant experience has changed dramatically. Despite the recent successes of immigrant and world literatures, there has been little scholarship on how the hardships of immigration are conveyed in immigrant narratives. Translating Pain fills this gap by examining literature from Muslim North Africa, the Caribbean, and Eastern Europe to reveal the representation of immigrant suffering in fiction.

Applying immigrant psychology to literary analysis, Madelaine Hron examines the ways in which different forms of physical and psychological pain are expressed in a wide variety of texts. She juxtaposes post-colonial and post-communist concerns about immigration, and contrasts Muslim world views with those of Caribbean creolité and post-Cold War ethics. Demonstrating how pain is translated into literature, she explores the ways in which it also shapes narrative, culture, history, and politics. A compelling and accessible study, Translating Pain is a groundbreaking work of literary and postcolonial studies.

Madelaine Hron is an assistant professor in the Department of English and Film at Wilfrid Laurier University.

Madelaine Hron's profile page

• Commended, Raymond Klibansky Prize shorlisted by ASPP

'In this study of global immigrant writing, Madelaine Hron demonstrates remarkable critical and theoretical dexterity ... Hron has made an important entry into the fields of national and transnational literatures.'

Rebecca Babcock, <em>The Dalhousie Review</em>

'In today's cultural globalization, the translation of émigré experience in literature through the rhetoric of pain is a topic that needs to be revisited. Madelaine Hron's thought-provoking and insightful pioneering work is an important step in this direction ... Her wide-ranging scholarship and original analysis in Translating Pain will certainly assist the next student of this important subject.'

Mila Šašková-Pierce, <em>KOSMAS: Czechoslovak and Central European Journal</em>

‘Translating Pain is ground breaking in its breadth of study and choice of texts… This book will be useful to scholars of francophone and Czech literature as well as to those interested in the latest developments in trauma studies, affect theory, and migrant literature.’

Julie-Françoise Kruidenier, <em>Slavic & East European Journal: vol 54:04:2010</em>