In examining subversive self-translation as a feature of the contemporary Congo book, Jacobs draws on the concept of the ‘contact zone’ (Pratt) and ‘cross-cultural discourse’ (Iser) as constituting a distinct social space with subversive powers of its own. This is what Pym would refer to as ‘interculture’ - the “beliefs and practices found in intersections or overlaps of cultures, where people combine something of two or more cultures at once” (1998) - and Frawley (1984) would refer to as ‘third code’: the intercultural discourse as a paradigm that, in its own right, draws on both source and target cultures in order to produce its own distinct identity: an identity that is always based on difference. Jacobs explores the nature of in-betweenness - its multiplicities and discontinuities, exchanges and renegotiations - through a close reading of chiasmus and palindrome, as both textual and social markers of the cross-cultural discursive dynamic. The question he raises is whether (in the postcolonial condition) self-reflexive cultural translation is able to achieve a true mutuality of cultures.