Overview

The essays in Shadows in the City of Light explore the significance of Paris in the writing of five influential French writers—Sarah Kofman, Patrick Modiano, George Perec, Henri Raczymow, and Irene Nemirovsky—whose novels and memoirs capture and probe the absences of deported Paris Jews. These writers move their readers through wartime and postwar cityscapes of Paris, walking them through streets and arrondissments where Jews once resided, looking for traces of the disappeared. The city functions as more than a backdrop or setting. Its streets and buildings and monuments remind us of the exhilarating promise of the French Revolution and what it meant for Jews dreaming of equality. But the dynamic space of Paris also reminds us of the Holocaust and its aftermath. The shadowed paths traced by these writers raise complicated questions about ambivalence, absence, memory, secularity, and citizenship. In their writing, the urban landscape itself bears witness to the absent Jews, and what happened to them. For the writers treated in this volume, neither their Frenchness nor their Jewishness is a fixed point. Focusing on Paris's dual role as both a cultural hub and a powerful symbol of hope and conflict in Jewish memory, the contributors address intersections and departures among these writers. Their complexity of thought, artistry, and depth of vision shape a new understanding of the impact of the Holocaust on Jewish and French identity, on literature and literary forms, and on the development of Jewish secular culture in Western Europe.

Full Product Details

Author:   Sara R. Horowitz ,  Amira Bojadzija-Dan ,  Julia Creet
Publisher:   State University of New York Press
Imprint:   State University of New York Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.50cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.227kg
ISBN:  

9781438481746

ISBN 10:   1438481748
Pages:   278
Publication Date:   02 January 2022
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

"Illustrations Acknowledgments 1. Introduction: The Long Shadow of the Jewish Question in Paris Part I: Topography 2. A Psychogeography of Dora Bruder Julia Creet 3. ""Ô popoï, popoï, popoï"": Breathless Sobs, Displacement, and Parisian Cartography in Sarah Kofman's Rue Ordener Rue Labat Gary D. Mole 4. Perec, Raczymow, and Their Sites of Memory Annelies Schulte Nordholt Part II: Familiar Strangers 5. Comme Dieu en France? Disillusionment and Dreams in Twentieth-Century French Jewish Immigrant Literature Nadia Malinovich 6. Sarah Kofman: A Strange Familiarity Henri Raczymow Part III: Ambivalences 7. A City of My Own: Paris and Desire in the Works of Patrick Modiano and Georges Perec Amira Bojadzija-Dan 8. Patrick Modiano's Dora Bruder: Wandering Down Memory Lane Maxime Decout 9. ""Paris of Days Gone By"": The Quest for Memory in a Postwar Haunted City—A Case Study of Georges Perec's and Patrick Modiano's Novels Ruth Malka Part IV: Absence 10. Mourning and the Work of Memory in Holocaust Memoirs L. Scott Lerner 11. Paris Obscur Thomas Nolden 12. Algerian Echoes in Modiano's and Perec's Cityscapes of Holocaust Memory Sarah Hammerschlag Part V: Past Imperfect 13. Perec's Ghost City Nelly Wolf 14. Street Walking Paris Sara R. Horowitz 15. The Afterlife of Irène Némirovsky's Suite française Susan Rubin Suleiman Contributors Index"

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Author Information

Sara R. Horowitz is Professor of Humanities and Comparative Literature at York University and the author of Voicing the Void: Muteness and Memory in Holocaust Fiction, also published by SUNY Press. Amira Bojadzija-Dan is Research Associate at the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies at York University. Julia Creet is Professor of English at York University and the author of The Genealogical Sublime. Together, they are also coeditors of H. G. Adler: Life, Literature, Legacy.

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