Cambridge Companion to Jewish American Literature

For more than two hundred years, Jews have played important roles in the development of American literature. The Cambridge Companion to Jewish American Literature addresses a wide array of themes and approaches to the distinct yet multifaceted body of Jewish American literature. Essays examine writing from the 1700s to major contemporary writers such as Saul Bellow and Philip Roth. Topics covered include literary history, immigration and acculturation, Yiddish and Hebrew literature, popular culture, women writers, literary theory and poetics, multilingualism, the Holocaust, and contemporary fiction. This collection of specially commissioned essays by leading figures discusses Jewish American literature in relation to ethnicity, religion, politics, race, gender, ideology, history, and ethics, and places it in the contexts of both Jewish and American writing. With its chronology and guides to further reading, this volume will prove valuable to scholars and students alike.

'… some exceptional essays in the collection …'. The Times Literary Supplement, 'This Companion is a very good read which may serve as a measuring rod of current trends.' Cercles

Michael P. Kramer is Professor in the Department of English at Bar Ilan University. He has written widely on Jewish American literature and he is the editor of New Essays on Seize the Day (1998). Hana Wirth-Nesher is Samuel L. and Perry Haber Chair on the Study of the Jewish Experience and Professor of English, Tel Aviv University. She is the author of City Codes: Reading the Modern Urban Novel.