This article discusses translated fiction in terms of ontology and epistemology. Translated novels should be considered distinct from untranslated fiction, notably the original from which they derive. They offer a distinctive alternative model of reality; after the brief moment of bifurcation which occurs in the translation process, they exist in another languages, cultures, and literary systems than the source text. There has been increasing recognition of the uniqueness of translated fiction, but there has been little research on it. The author suggests that insights of translation theorists, textual semioticians and literary scholars can unravel the nature of translated novels, including their culturally hybrid elements, their reshaping of the narrative voice, their use of an interlanguage, and so on.