Cultural References and Textual Conventions in Mark Behr's The Smell of Apples: Comprehension and Re-creation

Abstract

Mark Behr, autor del The Smell of Apples (1993), concentra una nueva generación de escritores en el panorama literario postaparheid de Sudáfrica. Estos escritores en una nación reconciliada aún en el limbo, refieren el cruento pasado para explorar y buscar respuestas y claves a la situación presente.

Mark Behr, the author of The Smell of Apples (1993), epitomises a new generation of writers in the post-apartheid literary landscape of South África. These writers, in a reconciled natíon stiU in limbo, refer to the excruciating past to explore it and search for answers and keys to the present. Behr, an Afrikaner himself, has written a book in Afrikaans and he then rewrote (or translated) it into English in 1995. Behr has kept his exploraüon within the boundaries of what he knows best -his own culture. However, to what extent can one write about one's own culture in a non-naüve language? The author first chose to write in the vernacular that had been termed in English as "the language of the oppressor". For him Afrikaans is more than a means of communicatíon, it is forever linked to the history of the Afrikaners in África. As such, it is not surprising that the vernacular is an integral part of the English edition of The Smell of Apples in which the author has purposely chosen to keep terms in Afrikaans. Such cultural and linguistic hybridity poses various problems for the translator, which may explain, along with other problems -Hke the lack of support from publishers—, why the novel has not yet been translated into languages like French or Spanish.