| Summary: | In the Western literary tradition, the "jew" has long been a figure of ethnic exclusion and social isolation - the wanderer, the scapegoat, the alien. But it is no longer clear where a perennial outsider belongs. This study of contemporary British writing points to the figure of the "jew" as the litmus test of multicultural society. The authors examine the "jew" as a cultural construction distinct from the "Jewishness" of literary characters in novels by, among others, Salman Rushdie, Anita Desai, Doris Lessing, Monica Ali, Caryl Philips, and Zadie Smith, as well as in contemporary art and film.
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| Biographical or Historical Data: | Efraim Sicher is a professor of English and comparative literature at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, and the author of The Holocaust Novel and Rereading the City/Rereading Dickens: Representation, the Novel, and Urban Realism. Linda Weinhouse is a professor of English and women's studies at the Community College of Baltimore County, Maryland. She has written widely on Doris Lessing, Nadine Gordimer, and Anita Desai. |
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