Abstract
In her essay on the ethical responsibility of writers as ‘public intellectuals’, American author Cynthia Ozick declares, ‘history isn’t only what we inherit, safe and sound after the fact; it is also what we are ourselves obliged to endure’ (2000, p. 123). This statement certainly resonates with an observation of works by the current generation of Jewish writers who continue to grapple with the legacy of antisemitism, forced migrations, and the catastrophe of the Holocaust and its aftermath. The return to the Holocaust and pre-war period by Rebecca Goldstein, Michael Chabon, Nathan Englander, Thane Rosenbaum, Nicole Kraus, Jonathan Saffran Foer, and Nomi Eve (among others) perhaps reflects the history they are ‘obliged to endure’ as Jews and as writers in a post-Holocaust present. Yet, these works are less a representation of past trauma than an expression of the rupture with the past wrought by WWII that continues to haunt the present. It is as if the spectre of the Holocaust is always there, sitting at the table, hiding in a closet, ready to make its way onto the page. Finding the appropriate ways to register this ghostly presence is, not surprisingly, a central concern in a number of works that confront Holocaust issues.1
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Spiro, M. (2014). Beasts of Burdened Memories: Exotic Figures in Michael Chabon’s Neo-Historical Holocaust Fiction. In: Rousselot, E. (eds) Exoticizing the Past in Contemporary Neo-Historical Fiction. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137375209_10
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