Description: Francophone Jewish Writers examines how Franco-Jewish writers depict Israel in autobiographies, memoirs and novels, exploring how those depictions reflect and inflect current socio-political tensions within and between France and Israel.
Brief description: Lucille Cairns was a Professor of French at the University of Durham, and author of numerous articles and chapters on French women's writing and filmmaking, male and female homosexuality in French literature and film, and Franco-Jewish writing, as well as of six sole-authored monographs.
Review Quotes:
'This closely engaged and forensically pursued investigation into the complex of emotional relationships with Israel as a modern state maintained both by Jews living there and diasporic Jews has the fascinating focus of the Francophone dimension of such a double investment [...] The book works through highly attentive readings of no fewer than 44 autobiographies, memoirs or novels by 27 different authors published over a 50-year period from 1965. [...] There is a powerful moment early on where the author convincingly defends the truth-value of affect in reading scenarios of complex and even anguished adherence [...] The successive readings indeed draw on an impressively wide range of theories and insights, encompassing historical overview, philosophical reasoning, political and journalistic urgency, and psychoanalytic or sociological frameworks.'
Sean Hand, Modern and Contemporary France