Double Burden, a Double Cross"

Vladimir Khazan teaches in the Department of Russian, German and Eastern European Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

“In his slim but very informative, provocative, and insightful new book, Israeli scholar Vladimir Khazan, an author of many pioneer studies on Russian Jewish poetics, recovers a largely forgotten figure: the writer and journalist Andrei Sobol (1887–1926). He presents Sobol as precisely such a serious Russian and serious Jewish writer, whose relationship to his Jewishness was meaningful, positive, and complex…The wealth of material presented here by Khazan points in the direction of future investigations of Sobol and his importance for Russian Jewish literature and beyond.”— Marat Grinberg, Modern Language Review"Vladimir Khazan’s in-depth study of the life and work of Andrei Sobol sheds new light on the complexity of Russian-Jewish cultural relationship. The book will be invaluable to both the scholarly community and the interested non-specialist, as it does an outstanding job in lifting the veil on one of the most mysterious figures in the history of the Russian literature during the turbulent revolutionary era."

• List of IllustrationsPrefaceList of AbbreviationsPart I. “…And, Apparently, a Very Good Jew”: Sobol as a Russian-Jewish Literary Critic and Journalist1  Baal-Machshoves and Andrei Sobol: Two Views on the Purpose and Objectives of Russian-Jewish Literature2 The Context and Subtext of Sobol’s Open Letter to D. Merezhkovsky3 A Battle that Never Happened (Sobol’s Unpublished Open Letter to Ivan. Bunin) PART II.  Andrei Sobol and Evreiskii MirPART III. Overcoming the Myth: Jewish Themes, Motifs, and Images in Sobol’s Works1. Between Literature and Politics: Sobol’s Novel Pyl’2. Jewish Themes, Motifs, and Images in Sobol’s Short Stories3. The Fate of Sobol’s Book EvreiPART IV. Sobol’s Translation of Wandering StarsPART V. Andrei Sobol and the Jewish TheaterConclusionNotesBibliographyIndex