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The Modern Jewish Canon

A Journey Through Language and Culture

What makes a great Jewish book? In fact, what makes a book "Jewish" in the first place? Ruth R. Wisse eloquently fields these questions in The Modern Jewish Canon, her compassionate, insightful guide to the finest Jewish literature of the twentieth century. From Isaac Babel to Isaac Bashevis Singer, Elie Wiesel to Cynthia Ozick, Wisse’s The Modern Jewish Canon is a book that every student of Jewish literature, and every reader of great fiction, will enjoy.

416 pages | 6 x 9 | © 2003

Jewish Studies

Religion: Judaism

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. THE COMEDY OF ENDURANCE
Sholem Aleichem
2. THE LOGIC OF LANGUAGE AND THE TRIALS OF THE JEWS
Franz Kafka and Yosef Haim Brenner
3. LITERATURE OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
From Isaac Babel to Vasily Grossman
4. BETWEEN THE WARS
The Singer Family of Warsaw
5. A FAREWELL TO POLAND
Jacob Glatstein and S.Y. Agnon
6. SHOAH, KHURBN, HOLOCAUST
Testimonies in Native and Adopted Tongues
7. THE ZIONIST FATE IN ENGLISH HANDS
From George Eliot to A.M. Klein
8. THE IMMIGRANT PHASE
American Jewish Fiction from 1900 to 1950
9. WRITING BEYOND ALIENATION
Saul Bellow, Cynthia Ozick, and Philip Roth
10. A CHAPTER IN THE MAKING
Israeli Literature
Author’s Postscript
Notes
Suggested Reading from the Modern Jewish Canon
Index

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