Literature of the Holocaust

Cambridge University Press, 11/14/2013
EAN 9781107008656, ISBN10: 1107008654

Hardcover, 324 pages, 22.8 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm
Language: English

During and in the aftermath of the dark period of the Holocaust, writers across Europe and America sought to express their feelings and experiences through their writings. This book provides a comprehensive account of these writings through essays from expert scholars, covering a wide geographic, linguistic, thematic and generic range of materials. Such an overview is particularly appropriate at a time when the corpus of Holocaust literature has grown to immense proportions and when guidance is needed in determining a canon of essential readings, a context to interpret them, and a paradigm for the evolution of writing on the Holocaust. The expert contributors to this volume, who negotiate the literature in the original languages, provide insight into the influence of national traditions and the importance of language, especially but not exclusively Yiddish and Hebrew, to the literary response arising from the Holocaust.

Introduction Alan Rosen
Part I. Wartime Victim Writing
1. Wartime victim writing in Eastern Europe David G. Roskies
2. Wartime victim writing in Western Europe David Patterson
Part II. Postwar Responses
3. The Holocaust and Italian literature Robert S. C. Gordon
4. German literature and the Holocaust Stuart Taberner
5. Hebrew literature of the Holocaust Sheila E. Jelen
6. The Holocaust and postwar Yiddish literature Jan Schwarz
7. The Holocaust in Russian literature Leona Toker
8. The Holocaust in English language literatures S. Lillian Kremer
9. Polish literature on the Holocaust Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska
10. Hungarian Holocaust literature Rita Horváth
11. French literature and the Holocaust Jeffrey Mehlman
Part III. Other Approaches
12. Oral memoir and the Shoah Alessandro Portelli
13. Songs of the Holocaust Shirli Gilbert
14. Sephardic literary responses to the Holocaust Judith Roumani
15. Anthologizing the Holocaust Alan Rosen
16. The Historian's Anvil, the Novelist's Crucible Eric J. Sundquist.

'Literature of the Holocaust is an important work. More than an anthology, it is a comprehensive collection of significant essays by distinguished authors, who provide both an overview and deep insights into Holocaust literature in the major languages of the West ordinarily inaccessible to the English reading world … Moreover, it grapples with major issues in Holocaust literature, such as the use of testimony and song, and the use and misuse of history. Each essay provides a rich survey and entry point for the study of Holocaust literature. I thought I knew Holocaust literature well, yet this work has given me years of important reading ahead, for which I am grateful. Comprehensive, consistently excellent, clear and yet also concise … a disquieting work as any good work on the Holocaust must be. It is a work to be cherished.' Michael Berenbaum, American Jewish University, Los Angeles