The Edinburgh Companion to Modern Jewish Fiction

by David Brauner (Editor), Axel Stähler (Editor)

Overview

Provides critical overviews of the main writers and key themes of Anglophone Jewish fiction
This collection of essays represents a new departure for, and a potentially (re)defining moment in, literary Jewish Studies. It is the first volume to bring together essays covering a wide range of American, British, South African, Canadian and Australian Jewish fiction. Moreover, it complicates all these terms, emphasising the porousness between different national traditions and moving beyond traditional definitions of Jewishness. For the sake of structural clarity, the volume is divided into three parts – ‘American Jewish Fiction’, ‘British Jewish Fiction’ and ‘International and Transnational Anglophone Jewish Fiction’ – but many of the essays cross over these boundaries and speak to each other implicitly, as well as, on occasion, explicitly. Extending and redefining the canon of modern Jewish fiction, the volume juxtaposes major authors with more marginal figures, revising and recuperating individual reputations, rediscovering forgotten and discovering new work, and in the process remapping the whole terrain. This volume opens windows onto vistas that previously had been obscured and opens doors for the next generation of studies that could not proceed without a wide-ranging, visionary empiricism grounding their work. The Edinburgh Companion is a paradigm-changing event, and nothing in Jewish literary studies that follows can fail to pay close attention to it.
Key Features:
Highlights the rich diversity of the field and identifies its key themes, including immigration, the Diaspora, the Holocaust, Judaism, assimilation, antisemitism and Zionism
Analyses the main trends in Anglophone Jewish fiction and situates them in historical context
Discusses the place of Anglophone Jewish fiction in relation to critical debates concerning transatlanticism and transnationalism; ethnicity and identity politics; postcolonial studies, feminist studies and Jewish Studies.
With a preface by Mark Shechner, the volume contains 28 essays by contributors including Vicki Aarons (Trinity University, Texas), Debra Shostak (Wooster College, Ohio), Ira Nadel (University of British Columbia), Efraim Sicher (Ben-Gurion University, Phyllis Lassner (Northwestern University), Sue Vice (University of Sheffield), Lori Harrison-Kahan (Boston College), Ruth Gilbert (University of Winchester), Beate Neumeier (University of Cologne) andSandra Singer (University of Guelph).

David Brauner is Professor of Contemporary Literature at The University of Reading.
Axel Stähler is Reader in Comparative Literature at the University of Kent, Canterbury.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781399508834
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	08/25/2022
Series:	Edinburgh Companions to Literature and the Humanities
Pages:	456
Product dimensions:	6.77(w) x 9.61(h) x (d)

About the Author

David Brauner is Professor of Contemporary Literature at the University of Reading. He is the author of two monographs - Post-War Jewish Fiction: Ambivalence, Self-Explanation and Transatlantic Connections (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2001) and Philip Roth (Manchester UniversityPress, 2007) - and has also published widely on twentieth-century Jewish literature, contemporary American fiction and post-war novelizations of biblical narratives.

Dr Axel Stähler is Senior Lecturer in Comparative Literature at the University of Kent. He is the editor of Writing Fundamentalism, with Klaus Stierstorfer (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009) and Anglophone Jewish Literature (Routledge, 2007).

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations vi

Acknowledgements vii

Preface: Jews Have Legs Mark Shechner ix

Introduction: Modern Jewish Fiction David Brauner Axel Stähler 1

Part I American Jewish Fiction

1 Pioneering Women Writers and the De-ghettoisation of Early American Jewish Fiction Lori Harrison-Kahan 19

2 Sensibilities of Estrangement: Delmore Schwartz, Isaac Rosenfeld and Saul Bellow Catherine Morley 33

3 The Making of American Jewish Identities in Postwar American Fiction Victoria Aarons 43

4 'Are you kidding me?' Black Humour in the Work of Joseph Heller, Stanley Elkin, Wallace Markfield and Bruce Jay Friedman David Gooblar 53

5 American Jewish Life Writing, Illness and the Ethics of Innovation Aimee Pozorski 64

6 From Feminist to Housewife and Back Again: Orthodoxy and Modernity in American Jewish Women's Writing Rachel S. Harris 76

7 Soviet Jews, Re-Imagined: Anglophone Émigré Jewish Writers from the USSR Sasha Senderovich 90

8 History on a Personal Note: Postwar American Jewish Short Stories David Brauner 105

9 Disappointed Believers? The Jewish Question Mark in Eisner's 'A Contract with God' Sarah Lightman 119

10 The Holocaust in American Jewish Fiction Jennifer Lemberg 138

11 Representing the Holocaust in Third-Generation American Jewish Writers Monica Osborne 149

12 Marginal Writers; or, Jews Who Aren't Debra Shostak 161

Part II British Jewish Fiction

13 The Postwar 'New Wave' of British Jewish Writing Efraim Sicher 175

14 Jewish Émigré and Refugee Writers in Britain David Herman 188

15 Jewish Exile in Englishness: Eva Tucker and Natasha Solomons Phyllis Lassner 199

16 Jewish, Half-Jewish, Jew-ish: Negotiating Identities in Contemporary British Jewish Literature Ruth Gilbert 210

17 Life Writing and the East End Devorah Baum 221

18 'Almost too good to be true': Israel in British Jewish Fiction, Pre-Lebanon Axel Stähler 237

19 The Writing on the Wall: Israel in British Jewish Fiction, Post-Lebanon Axel Stähler 253

20 British Jewish Holocaust Fiction Sue Vice 267

21 Reading Matters: 'Marginal' British Jewish Writers Beate Neumeier 279

Part III International and Transnational Anglophone Jewish Fiction

22 Jewish Writing in Canada Ira Nadel 291

23 South African Jewish Writers Linda Weinhouse 303

24 Repairing Cracked Heirlooms: South African Jewish Literary Memory of Lithuania and Latvia Claudia B. Braude 318

25 Australian Jewish Fiction: A Bibliographical Survey Serge Liberman 332

26 'Migrant' Jewish Writers in the Anglophone Diaspora Sandra Singer 346

27 Jewish Novels of the Spanish Civil War Emily Robins Sharpe 355

28 Mooristan and Palimpstine: Jews, Moors and Christians in Amitav Ghosh and Salman Rushdie Shaul Bassi 367

List of Contributors 378

Works Cited 383

Index

Names 415

Subject 420

Title 431

What People are Saying About This

Professor Bryan Henry Cheyette

The Edinburgh Companion to Modern Jewish Fiction is a prodigious, paradigm-shifting collection. Made up of leading scholars in the field, it both ranges widely across linguistic and national boundaries and also includes detailed accounts of American, British, South African, Canadian and Australian Jewish fiction. It will transform our understanding of Jewish literary studies.

Editorial Reviews

The Edinburgh Companion to Modern Jewish Fiction is a prodigious, paradigm-shifting collection. Made up of leading scholars in the field, it both ranges widely across linguistic and national boundaries and also includes detailed accounts of American, British, South African, Canadian and Australian Jewish fiction. It will transform our understanding of Jewish literary studies.

Professor Bryan Henry Cheyette

This most comprehensive volume is replete with fascinating material creating much food for thought. Sturdily bound, with a typeface not difficult on ageing eyes and an attractive jacket...is highly recommended for all reference collections.

Reference Reviews, volume 30, issue 4 - William Baker

This most comprehensive volume is replete with fascinating material creating much food for thought. Sturdily bound, with a typeface not difficult on ageing eyes and an attractive jacket...is highly recommended for all reference collections.
— William Baker, Northern Illinois University for Reference Reviews, volume 30, issue 4

From the Publisher