This essay considers Makine’s fiction as emblematic of a literature of exile that extends into an increasingly ex-centric European polysystem the polyphonic aesthetics of an eccentric culture, peculiarly conscious of the ambivalent capacities of translation—to authorize publication; to challenge the authority of both 'original' and 'secondary' literary tradition; to guarantee and, at the same time, undermine 'authenticity;' to double, defer, displace authorship. It critically reconsiders the contribution of writers such as Makine, to Russian, French, and transnational literature, by cross-examining the multiple manifestions of translation in his novels through the layered critical lenses of Even-Zohar’s, Deleuze and Guattari’s, Bakhtin’s, and Lotman’s work in linguistics, narrative theory, and cultural semiotics.