It is generally acknowledged that translating literary texts consists not only in the translator’s command of the source and target languages but also in their mastery of the intricate nuances of meaning, their familiarity with authorial styles and the specific contexts of the work in question, and their ability to render all these in a coherent, effective, and artistic fashion. Challenges are heightened when translators aim at translating postmodernist fiction characterized by performative authorship, namely the intentional blurring of the boundaries between the real author, the constructed authorial identity (implied author), and the various narratorial voices within the narrative discourse. Implementing such techniques as self-reflexivity, intertextualization, metafiction, pastiche, authorial intrusion, metalepsis, and paratextuality, performative authorship foregrounds not only the very act of writing but also authorial presence. The present essay studies the intricacies and challenges involved in translating the performative layers of authorship in such fictional works, with special reference to the narrative discourse of Meena Kandasamy’s recent novel Exquisite Cadavers (2019) as a prominent instance of the genre. The novel’s exquisite narrative and thematic structure call for the reader’s / translator’s full consciousness of the distinct authorial voices within and without the text. Through a detailed analysis of the interconnection of meaning and authorial, it is argued that such texts resist conventional strategies of literary translation and, instead, demand an informed awareness of the multilayered structural and thematic aspects of postmodernist fiction as well as radical techniques for translation. It is also suggested that in such cases translation evolves into “performative translation,” the translator transforming into a “co-performer.”
