Jewish Writing in the Contemporary World – serie

With the release of Nelson Mandela, the advent of nonracial democracy, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, South Africans have found themselves grappling with the legacy of apartheid's racial and cultural divisions. Together with Claudia Bathsheba Braude's path-breaking introduction, the stories collected in this anthology tap silences that were central to apartheid rule and that have particular resonances for South African Jewish history and memory. Bringing together the best and most noteworthy of a wide range of contemporary writers who represent the historical specificities and contradictions of South African Jewish life under apartheid, Contemporary Jewish Writing in South Africa makes compellingly clear the depths and complexities of a society in which racial identities, including Jewish whiteness, were deliberately constructed. The contributors include Nobel Prize–winning novelist Nadine Gordimer; well-known writers such as Rose Zwi and Dan Jacobson; exiled ANC activist and constitutional court judge Albie Sachs; satirist Pieter-Dirk Uys, a penetrating critic of apartheid; and actor and writer Matthew Krouse, whose fiction offers a provocative blending of gay and Jewish identities in the postapartheid era. The volume traces the construction of memory and racial identity in South African Jewish literary and cultural history. Among the recurring themes in these stories are the selective presentation of certain aspects of Jewish life under apartheid, a reevaluation of identity after its fall, and the conflicting shadow of the Holocaust in a white supremacist society. Giving nuanced voice to questions about history, race, and ethnicity in postapartheid South Africa, these stories will be of broad interest.

Contemporary Jewish Writing in Canada brings together important and innovative works from modern Jewish writers living in Canada. This anthology presents a variety of male and female voices, both established and new, some translated from French or Yiddish. Caught between a conservative British tradition and an aggressive American influence with a long immigrant history, Canadian Jewish literature has charted a unique, intermediate course. The largest community of Jewish writers in Canada can be found in Montreal, where a vibrant Yiddish culture has flourished, surrounded by a Francophone majority. Beginning with A. M. Klein and carrying through the works of Leonard Cohen and Mordecai Richler, Jewish writing in Montreal has adapted to changing political and linguistic pressures over the course of the twentieth century. A number of Jewish authors in this anthology write in French and are involved in translation—not just of language, but of cultural values as well.The second largest concentration of Jewish writers in Canada is in Winnipeg and the western part of the country, where Jewish communities have strong Yiddish and socialist roots. A generation of younger writers, however, have shifted from these earlier centers to Toronto, where they form part of a multicultural mosaic, blending Jewish, Canadian, and cosmopolitan values. From Anne Michaels's Greek island to Aryeh Lev Stollman's Berlin and Michael Redhill's Irish synagogue, Canadian-Jewish literature engages exile—at home abroad and abroad at home.

Devoted to collecting the finest Jewish writing from around the world, the Jewish Writing in the Contemporary World series consists of anthologies, by country, that are designed to present to the English-speaking world authors and works deserving international consideration. As a series, the books permit a broad examination of the international crosscurrents in Jewish thought and culture. Contemporary Jewish Writing in Austria presents a gathering of writers from several generations who have published a remarkable range of works in recent decades. The result is a diverse portrait of Jewish experience in Austria since the Second World War. Dagmar C. G. Lorenz has assembled an extraordinary roster of literary talents, ranging from authors born in the early decades of this century to writers born after the Shoah. The volume maps a complex tradition of Jewish discourse marked by a profound awareness of the literary past, by the failure of a long-anticipated Austrian-Jewish symbiosis, and by the unparalleled tragedy of the Shoah. It is a modern tradition that has made an essential contribution to Austria's literary history while remaining, in Lorenz's words, "distinct and unassimilated."

This anthology features an eclectic mix of eighteen modern works by a selection of Switzerland's heterogeneous community of Jewish writers. Questions about Jewish identity and the legacy of the Holocaust remain current and controversial in Switzerland because of the country's now well-publicized economic involvement with Hitler's Germany and the scandal that erupted when the purported Holocaust memoir of Binjamin Wilkomirski was revealed to be a hoax. This collection includes an excerpt from a novel by Daniel Ganzfried, the journalist who exposed the Wilkomirski Affair; two chilling counterfactual accounts of a Nazi-occupied Switzerland by television scriptwriter Charles Lewinsky; an epistolary satire of contemporary Swiss and Jewish life by Sergueï Hazanov, a Russian-Jewish immigrant; lyrical evocations of exile by Gabriele Markus; a memoir by renowned theatre director Luc Bondy; strikingly harsh portraits of contemporary European life from painter and performance artist Miriam Cahn; and a screenplay about the Holocaust and Jewish refugees in Switzerland by Swiss filmmaker Stina Werenfels.Surprising in its diversity and sometimes disturbing in its preoccupations, this anthology will make it hard to generalize about Jewish life in Switzerland or to think in polarities such as Switzerland and "the Jews."

Devoted to collecting the finest Jewish writing from around the world, the Jewish Writing in the Contemporary World series consists of anthologies, by country, that are designed to present to the English-speaking world authors and works deserving international consideration. As a series, the books permit a broad examination of the international crosscurrents in Jewish thought and culture. Contemporary Jewish Writing in Poland brings together the works of a broad range of modern Jewish writers, most of whom remained in Poland after the Second World War. Although the Nazi genocide wiped out nearly all of the Jewish population in the country, the aftermath of the war has not stifled Jewish writing in Poland but has given it a different direction. A complex body of literature describes Jewish life before the war, documents the Holocaust, and wrestles with its legacy—particularly the difficulties of living in a country where it occurred.

This anthology features a diverse and compelling array of writings from prominent Jewish authors in Germany today. The writers included here-Katja Behrens, Maxim Biller, Esther Dischereit, and Barbara Honigmann-did not experience the Holocaust firsthand, though their works continually explore the meaning of it as it is remembered and forgotten in contemporary Germany. From different perspectives these authors offer incisive reflections on German-Jewish relations today. They wrestle in particular with the strangeness of living in a country where unencumbered relationships between Germans and Jews are rare. Also surfacing in their writings are the many foundations and challenges to modern Jewish identity in Germany, including the vicissitudes of gender roles, and the experience of emigration, intergenerational conflict, and sexuality. Contemporary Jewish Writing in Germany not only features a set of engaging stories but also encourages a deeper understanding of the experiences of Jews in Germany today.

Contemporary Jewish Writing in Brazil showcases a diverse range of modern Jewish writers from one of South America's most vibrant, multicultural communities. Brazil's population is largely Catholic; its Jewish population today numbers about 120,000 mostly upwardly mobile Jews living in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Pôrto Alegre. Brazilian Jewish writers often use the testimonial and fantastic modes of Latin American literature to expose anti-Semitism, explore the challenges and opportunities for the Jewish diaspora in South America, and reexamine historical and cultural connections to the Old World. This anthology features the work of such internationally recognized figures as Moacyr Scliar and Clarice Lispector, including two early stories by Lispector that have never before appeared in English translation. Of special note are Samuel Rawet, the father of modern Jewish writing in Brazil; Alberto Dines, a prominent public and literary figure in the 1970s and 1980s; and more recently acclaimed writers such as Cíntia Moscovich.

Contemporary Jewish Writing in Britain and Ireland presents a wide range of writers—some at the heart of British culture, others outside the mainstream—who address the issue of Jewish cultural difference in Great Britain and Ireland. Editor Bryan Cheyette has assembled a striking roster of writers whose extraordinary imagination and understanding of Jewish experience in Britain and Ireland have transformed English literature in recent decades. They include established figures like Anita Brookner, Harold Pinter, and George Steiner, as well as such vibrant new voices as Elena Lappin, Jonathan Treitel, and Jonathan Wilson. As Cheyette argues, "the contemporary British-Jewish writers in this volume defy the authority of England and the Anglo-Jewish community. . . . [All] are risk-takers who . . . will eventually help replace narrow national narratives and gendered identities with a broader, more plural, diasporic culture."