Making German Jewish Literature Anew

"Garloff's new study shows how wrong we were to think of German Jewish literature has having reached its apex in prewar 'assimilation' or in postwar thematization of the Holocaust. On the contrary, German Jewish literary output has remained breathtakingly prolific and complexly heterogeneous; it is treated here—in Making German Jewish Literature Anew—with particular insight, precision, and candor."—William Collins Donahue, Cavanaugh Professor of the Humanities, and Professor of European Studies, University of Notre Dame

"Garloff's Making German Jewish Literature Anew offers an insightful analysis of the growing corpus of contemporary German Jewish literature, including by writers who arrived from the former Soviet Union after the end of the Cold War. The book's key strength is its focus on how writers are both shaping a new canon and at the same time reflecting on the possibilities and potentialities of German Jewish literature, and indeed Jewish literature more generally. This is a volume of insightful and incisive readings of literary texts, supported by an original and highly productive theoretical framework."—Stuart Taberner, University of Leeds

"This discussion of German Jewish writing from 1989 to the present is firmly embedded in current literary and theoretical debates and takes them further in compelling ways, urging the reader to think anew. Structured around the three gestures of 'performing authorship', 'remaking memory' and 'claiming places' – all central to the project of a literature that is always 'made anew' –, this book provides a rich and important contribution to current research into the hybrid, heterogeneous and dynamic character of Jewish writing in German."—Godela Weiss-Sussex, King's College Cambridge

"Brilliant and riveting at every turn, Making German Jewish Literature Anew opens up entirely new vistas for understanding the evolving literary forms, paratextual shifts, and transcultural significance of multifaceted Jewish writing in Germany and Austria today. Katja Garloff's luminous study of "founding gestures" in this contemporary connection sparkles with countless conceptual insights for the broader humanities too. Anyone interested in thoughtfully revelatory approaches to literature, diversity, migration, comparison, similarity, difference, authorship, memory, place-claiming, innovation, and even literary tradition itself will be well served to read this remarkably refreshing book."—Leslie A. Adelson, Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of German Studies, Cornell University

"Making German Jewish Literature Anew  probes the complexity of Jewishness, identity, culture, and ethnicity in post-1989 Jewish writing in Germany. Katja Garloff's thoughtful and trenchant work invites us to reflect on the reconfigurations of Jewishness in Germany today and the very category of Jewish literature itself. This is a brilliant work that opens up new spaces for thinking about the mechanisms of Jewish history and literature in a post-migrant Germany."—Leslie Morris, Beverly and Richard Fink Professor in Liberal Arts, University of Minnesota

"The theoretically rigorous and readable monograph will serve as an important intervention into the field for scholars of German Jewish literature while at the same time serving as a strong introduction to the authors and debates for readers interested in German literature and Jewish studies more generally."—Helen Finch - University of Leeds, Leeds UK, The German Quarterly