Thomas Nolden
Cloth $29.95s | 0-8156-3089-1 | 2005
An encyclopedic introduction to French Jewish literature as it has emerged since the late 1960s.
Description
This book provides a wide-ranging analysis of French Jewish authors born after the Shoah
and traces the development of the rich agenda of jeune littérature juive (young Jewish writing)
from its beginnings in the late 1970s, into the 1980s and 1990s, when it gained intense
momentum. Thomas Nolden uses a wealth of biographical information to expound on his
central thesis: the abrupt interruption of transmission of the Jewish heritage by assimilation,
migration, and near-extermination required these writers to reinvent themselves,
their past, and their memories as Jews.
Nolden provides concise readings of the fiction of more than two dozen writers of both
Sephardic and Ashkenazi background living in present-day France. He demonstrates
how contemporary Jewish writing has responded historically, culturally, politically, and
aesthetically to developments in French society and in Jewish culture. His critical analysis
of the major themes, concerns, and stylistic features of the authors' work connects Jewish
writing in France to the traditions of Jewish writing both during the Diaspora and in Israel.
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Author
Thomas Nolden is professor of German and director of the Comparative
Literature Program at Wellesley College. He has widely written on Jewish
writing and culture in Europe.
6 x 9, 264 pages, works cited, notes, index
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Syracuse University Press
