Charting the East in Nadeem Aslam's Maps for Lost Lovers

This study will look at Nadeem Aslam’s Maps for Lost Lovers as published by Faber and Faber in 2004. The novel itself exemplifies the dialogue between East and West under a literary, cultural and linguistic perspective. My analysis will focus mainly on the latter aspect through the identification of the linguistic features that give the text its ‘Oriental feel’. Moreover, my paper will seek to highlight the strategies used by the Italian translator Delfina Vezzoli to recreate such features in her version of the novel published by Feltrinelli. I will perform a stylistic analysis of both source and target text as this may provide an opportunity to detect how the ‘Orientalising effect’ is achieved in the novel and to discuss the translator’s choices in her pursuit of equivalence.