Miranda Jones

Date of Award

2014

First Advisor

Peter Filkins

Second Advisor

Colette van Kerckvoorde

Abstract

Faserland, Christian Kracht's debut novel in the Popliteratur scene, portrays a young and nameless writer who travels throughout Germany without any fixed destinations. He illustrates 1990's Germany for the reader by way of a first-person narrative that utilizes popular culture references and brand names to highlight the themes of consumerism in the text. The novel has not yet been published in English, but it provides a perspective on German culture that I believe the English-speaking reader should experience. Therefore I have translated the entire novel from German to English. Along with the translation, I provide the reader with a critical introduction to Christian Kracht and pop literature, followed by an analytical discussion of Faserland's protagonist in relation to consumerism, identity issues, and his unreliability as a narrator. I then interpret these themes in the text in order to draw my conclusions about these topics. Finally, I describe my experience with literary translation, the problems therein, and the translation theories that correspond to my techniques.

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