French & Italian

Profile

David Bellos gained his doctorate in French literature from Oxford University (UK) and taught subsequently at Edinburgh, Southampton and Manchester before coming to Princeton in 1997. He worked first in nineteenth century studies, particularly on the novel and the history of literary ideas, then developed interests in modern and contemporary French writing, as the translator and then the biographer of Georges Perec. He has interests in several other fields, including the history of the book and film studies, but has been engaged most of all in recent years in literary translation and in Translation Studies. He has a joint appointment in French and Comparative Literature and is also Director of the Program in Translation and Intercultural Communication. He has won the French-American Foundation’s translation prize (1988), the Prix Goncourt de la Biographie (1994) and the Man Booker International translator’s award (2005).

Teaching Interests

Modern European fiction (French, Russian, Balkan); Jewish Literature in French; Translation Studies; formal and experimental writing of the 1960s and beyond (Queneau, Perec, Roubaud, and the Oulipo); nineteenth century studies. He also teaches high-level translation courses (French-English and English-French) from time to time.

Recent and forthcoming publications

Romain Gary: A Tall Story. London, (Secker Harvill, June 2010)

Romain Gary writing as Emile Ajar, Hocus Bogus (Yale UP, 2010; paperback, May 2012)

Georges Perec, the art & craft of approaching your head of department to submit a request for a raise (London: Vintage, 2011)

Le Poisson et la bananier. L'histoire fabuleuse de la traduction (Paris: Flammarion, 2012). Traduction Daniel Loayza avec la collaboration de l'auteur

Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything. Penguin (UK) and Faber (US), fall 2011.

Professor Bellos's schedule of talks in 2012 can be found here