The book looks at translation from many angles: it explores how translations change the languages in which they occur, how works introduced from other languages become part of the consciousness of native speakers, what strategies translators must use to secure acceptance for foreign works, and the history of translation in China.

Haun Saussy is University Professor at the University of Chicago, a former Guggenheim Fellow and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His books and articles mainly concern literature, translation, poetics and hermeneutics across a broad comparative spectrum. He has translated the poetry of Jean Métellus and the plays of Tino Caspanello as well as authors from dynastic and contemporary China. Among his current projects is an international history of East Asian literatures from 3000 BCE to the present.

• Introduction: Translation Inside Out


• 1: Norns and Norms


• 2: Death and Translation


• 3: Matteo Ricci the Daoist


• 4: The First Age of Translation


• 5: The Extravagant Zhuangzi