Nimble Tongues is a collection of essays that continues Steven G. Kellman's work in the fertile field of translingualism, focusing on the phenomenon of switching languages. A series of investigations and reflections rather than a single thesis, the collection is perhaps more akin in its aims-if not accomplishment-to George Steiner's Extraterritorial: Papers on Literature and the Language Revolution or Umberto Eco's Travels in Hyperreality. Topics covered include the significance of translingualism
translation and its challenges
immigrant memoirs
the autobiographies that Ariel Dorfman wrote in English and Spanish, respectively
the only feature film ever made in Esperanto
Francesca Marciano, an Italian who writes in English
Jhumpa Lahiri, who has abandoned English for Italian
Ilan Stavans, a prominent translingual author and scholar
Hugo Hamilton, a writer who grew up torn among Irish, German, and English
Antonio Ruiz-Camacho, a Mexican who writes in English
and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a multilingual text.