Michael Lavery

“Translating the Blazing Continent” uncovers how translations of Latin American fiction reshaped Soviet visions of socialist internationalism during the Cold War. Beginning in the 1960s, novels by such writers as Gabriel García Márquez, Julio Cortázar, and Carlos Fuentes appeared in Russian translation, quickly becoming a fixture of late Soviet culture. Through archival research and analysis of translations, paratexts, literary criticism, and interviews, this project reconstructs the negotiations among translators, critics, and state officials over how to introduce Latin American writing to readers. The effort to integrate these works into the Soviet canon ultimately redefined the boundaries of socialist realism, articulating a broader postcolonial framework of world literature.