Nostalgia for a Foreign Land

Roman Katsman is Professor of Hebrew Literature at Bar-Ilan University, Israel. He is author of six books and numerous articles on Hebrew and Russian literatures, and Jewish-Russian literature and thought. His recent interests are concerned with laughter in S.Y. Agnon's works and the contemporary Russian intellectual literature.

With great knowledge of cultural studies and philosophy and with an impressive interpretive depth, Katsman … reflects on the works themselves. He manages to combine an oeuvre’s central semantic aspects in a comprehensive philosophical interpretation.

• PrefaceDina Rubina: A Portrait of the Artist as a Messiah and a PirateIntroductionCarnival and SincerityMigration and NeoindigeneityMessiahs, Mothers, and OrphansVictims and HeroesFrom Trauma to the RealOrigins and CopiesFugitives, Nomads, and PiratesThe Metaphysical LeapNekod Singer in Russian and Hebrew: Neoeclecticism and BeyondA Noble Man of Our TimesThe Jerusalem Trilogy of Elizaveta Mikhailichenko and Yury NesisIerusalimsky dvorianin (A noble man of Jerusalem, 1997): An Abortive Gesture of ViolenceI/e_rus.olim (2004): History, Sacrifice, and NetworkЗЫ (Preemptive Revenge, 2006): The Other’s HeroismMikhail Yudson’s Lestnitsa na shkaf (The ladder to the cabinet): The New Language of MetaphysicsA Ladder to the NeoindigeneityAfterwordWorks Cited