Description: Israeli literary representations of eastern European Jewry strive, sometimes successfully, to recuperate eastern European Jewish pre-Holocaust culture for the edification of an audience that might feel responsible for the silencing and extinction of that culture.
Review Quotes: Through meticulous research and elegant readings, Jelen offers a fresh look at canonical writers, recovers lesser-known works of these writers, and introduces almost-forgotten writers, bringing them together in a compelling narrative. A major contribution of the book is the way it clearly defines the term 'salvage poetics': as the intersection between past and present, ethnography and aesthetics; as a way to understand, preserve, and substitute for the vanished world.--Nancy E. Berg "professor of Hebrew and comparative literature, Washington University in St. Louis" (6/13/2023 12:00:00 AM)