(Un)Successful Feminisms? Mapping Chick Lit Fiction in Europe

In the literary world, women’s literature has traditionally been excluded from the canon of prominent authors and texts. Male authors have always dominated the literary scenes worldwide whereas women’s writing has always played a subordinate or less import role. Nevertheless, in the postfeminist era, world literature has witnessed to a proliferation of the so-called Chick Lit. Marketed as a ‘for women, by women, about women’ genre, Chick Lit has rapidly evolved into a worldwide cultural and literary phenomenon. Chick Lit gained popularity after the success of Helen Fielding’s novel Bridget Jones’s Diary (1996) and Candace Bushnell’s Sex and the City (1996). Since the publication of these texts, thanks to the numerous translations worldwide many Chick Lit novels about various aspects of women’s experiences have been published, thus generating increasing academic interest and research. The aim of this work is to provide a tentative mapping of how the translation impact of Chick Lit led to a considerable production of this genre in Europe, thus showing how different countries adapt this genre to suit their socio-cultural context.