Contemporary Jewish Writing in Germany: An Anthology

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.

Leslie Morris is an assistant professor of German at the University of Minnesota. She is a coeditor of Unlikely History: The Changing German-Jewish Symbiosis, 1945-2000. Karen Remmler is an associate professor of German studies at Mount Holyoke College. She is the author of Waking the Dead: Correspondence between Walter Benjamin's Concept of Remembrance and Ingeborg Bachmann's "Ways of Dying".

"This thoughtfully assembled and fluidly translated collection brings together some of the most compelling Jewish writers in German literature today. As part of an important series of contemporary Jewish writing abroad translated into English, the book reveals how heavy the burden of a traumatic history remains for the descendants of the Nazis'' victims. Instead of being mournful and dejected, however, these pieces are intelligent, occasionally irreverent, and sometimes even funny reflections on particularly German modes of memory and repression and on the at times bizarre aspects of Jewish life in a country that only two generations ago rallied for the destruction of an entire people. Recommended for all academic libraries and specialized collections." --"Library Journal"