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Reviewed by:
  • Contemporary Jewish Writing in Europe: A Guide
  • Rachel S. Harris
Contemporary Jewish Writing in Europe: A Guide. Ed. Vivian Liska and Thomas Nolden. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2006. Pp. 224. Cloth $29.95. ISBN 978-0-253-34875-3

"Europe is charged with a past that has defined contemporary Jewish identity in a most crucial manner. And yet contemporary Europe also must be seen as a framework that offers the possibility of renegotiating the relationship between Jewish and non-Jewish cultures and providing the space for unique modes of articulation and enunciative positions"

( xix).

Despite the massive toll to Jewish life during the Holocaust, European Jewry with its abundant cultural heritage continues to exist, and furthermore, to flourish. This fact is often forgotten, particularly on the syllabi of Jewish Studies programs in the U.S. If European Jews are mentioned at all, they invariably feature in history courses that highlight the destruction of continental Jewry during the mid-twentieth century. In contrast, this insightful volume, edited [End Page 76] by Vivian Liska and Thomas Nolden, seeks to radically shift American perceptions and to provide resources for those seriously considering the possibility of reading and teaching literature in English translation from the increasingly prolific output by Jews across Europe.

Liska and Nolden's Guide brings together a series of articles by leading scholars of European Jewish fiction. The volume covers ten areas or linguistically defined regions including Austria, Germany, Hungary, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Italy, Britain, France, Poland and Russia. These borders are a little flexible. Scottish Jewish literature appears in the section "British Jewish literature," a section that deals mainly with Anglo-Jewish fiction but also includes South-Africa. Russian language fiction in the main relates to Jews outside Russia, who may have come from other former Soviet regions, but Germany and Austria, despite sharing the German language are treated as separate regions, while Scandinavia includes Finland, Norway, Denmark and Sweden despite the separate linguistic and cultural histories of these areas. All the contributions reach back in time, often to the heyday of late- nineteenth and early-twentieth century fiction. But they also move forward into the contemporary literary world and range across thematic and stylistic motifs and topics that include humor, modernism, issues of identity, contact with the non-Jewish world and a penchant for representing the world through fractured landscapes of time or place. Genres represented include drama, prose and poetry.

Nolden and Liska's introduction is clear and accessible. They demonstrate the cohesive sense of Europe on one hand, while highlighting regional individuality on the other. Importantly, they provide an overarching thematic sense of the project and demonstrate the divergence between European fiction and the more well-known American Jewish form, style, and subject matter. The helpful introduction particularly highlights many of the problems in talking about European fiction by individual country or language rather than by the greater region of Europe. Many of the writers were born in one country and live in another, and often write in a language either from their previous home or use a language of the present to describe a world from elsewhere, either in time or place. Even the linguistic framework for discussing this complex picture is problematic. Variations in linguistic, cultural and geographical identity lead to a more universal sense of cosmopolitanism or internationalism. However, as the volume explains, it is precisely these words and ideas that were part of the semantic codification of anti-semitism across Europe. "Jews were considered to be cosmopolites, that is, not patriots." (194) As such, the terminology can evoke unintended meanings and it seems these scholars are trying to find new ways to articulate these cross-boundary ideas.

Most strikingly, the articles seem to engage with authors' consideration of the question of what it means to be a Jewish writer or a writer of Jewish literature and the relationship between Jewish identity and that of other competing identities such as political allegiance, host country or birth country. To some degree, all the articles conclude that there is a constantly shifting hybridity to European Jewish identity, which can change from moment to moment. [End Page 77]

The individual articles deal with...

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