A TRANSLATION SAMPLER

As international postmodernism evolved in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s, readers around the world sought out Barth’s writing. Yet the books displayed here reveal that the titles most often translated, into languages as diverse as Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, and Polish, were Barth’s earlier and more traditional novels, like The Floating Opera, The End of the Road, and The Sot-Weed Factor. At the same time, the cover designs of these books—published in the years when Barth’s reputation as an avant-garde practitioner was growing—often register an awareness of his status as an experimental writer.