Description:
Deepens and enriches our understanding of the Jewish literary tradition and the implications of the Shoah.
Challenging the notion that Jewish American and Holocaust literature have exhausted their limits, this volume reexamines these closely linked traditions in light of recent postmodern theory. Composed against the tumultuous background of great cultural transition and unprecedented state-sponsored systematic murder, Jewish American and Holocaust literature both address the concerns of postmodern human existence in extremis. In addition to exploring how various mythic and literary themes are deconstructed in the lurid light of Auschwitz, this book provides critical reassessments of Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, and Philip Roth, as well as contemporary Jewish American writers who are extending this vibrant tradition into the new millennium. These essays deepen and enrich our understanding of the Jewish literary tradition and the implications of the Shoah.
Brief description: Alan L. Berger is Raddock Eminent Scholar Chair of Holocaust Studies and Director of Judaic Studies at Florida Atlantic University. He is the author of Crisis and Covenant: The Holocaust in American Jewish Fiction, also published by SUNY Press; editor of Judaism in the Modern World; and coeditor of Methodology in the Academic Teaching of the Holocaust.
Review Quotes: "The intellectual importance of this work is unquestioned and the topic immensely important. The essays are gripping and revealing, opening up so much that has been hidden."