Aharon Appelfeld: From Individual Lament to Tribal Eternity

by Yigal Schwartz

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Summary

Aharon Appelfeld stands among the most prominent Israeli writers and is the most frequently published Israeli writer in the US. His works have received numerous prestigious literary awards in Israel as well as international critical acclaim. Yet there is a paucity of good critical writing about his impressive body of work. Yigal Schwartz's compelling study, based in part on interviews with Appelfeld himself, admirably fills this gap. Schwartz organizes his book around three of Appelfeld's major themes: the recovery of childhood and memory, the creation of place, and the religious stance of the Holocaust writer. He discusses Appelfeld's imaginative reconstruction of his childhood, his fictional world in spatial terms, and the peculiarly Jewish notion of time and fate experienced by the characters in his novels. In addition, Schwartz develops a new perspective not only on Appelfeld's work, but on Holocaust literature per se. He sees Appelfeld as a Holocaust writerwhose underlying concerns go beyond his experiences as a Holocaust survivor to include larger issues of Jewish identity in the modern period.

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