The Wartime Diary of Edmund Kessler.
by Edmund Kessler
ISBN 978-1-934843-98-7
250 pp. cloth
$30.00
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Publication Date: February, 2010

 In The Wartime Diary of Edmund Kessler, Dr. Kessler, a Jewish attorney from Lwow, Poland, gives an eye-witness account of the Holocaust through the events recorded in his diary between the years, 1942-1944. In vivid, raw, documentary style, he describes his experiences in the Lwow Ghetto, the Janowska Concentration Camp, and in an underground bunker where he and twenty-three other Jews were hidden by a courageous Polish farmer and his family. The book includes a chapter written by Kazimierz Kalwinski, who, as a teenager, was a care-taker for the hidden Jews on his family’s farm. Edmund’s daughter, Renata Kessler, coordinated the book and has written the epilogue about her search for the story, which has taken her to Israel, Poland, and Lviv, Ukraine. Renowned scholar Antony Polonsky contributes an insightful historical overview of the times in which the book takes place. A tremendous resource for historians, scholars and those interested in the Holocaust.

Reviews:

“The Wartime Diary of Edmund Kessler is a slim volume with considerable power. In prose and poetry, Kessler describes the conditions of Jewish life in the large but understudied ghetto of Lwow, Poland. His observations are keen, precise, his tone reserved and understated. He writes simply: “needless to say, conditions were difficult.” Elsewhere he says: “I owe my survival to the fact that admirable people still in the world.”
-- Michael Berenbaum, Director, Sigi Ziering Institute, Professor of Jewish Studies,            American Jewish University (Los Angeles)

“The Wartime Diary of Edmund Kessler is not only a gripping account of the fate of Lwow Jewry during the war but also a unique mirror of the parallel perspectives of the rescued and their rescuers. This rich collection includes Kessler's wartime diary, his wartime poetry, and a 1998 memoir by Kazimierz Kalwinski, the son of the Polish couple who hid Kessler, his wife and 22 other Jews on their farm. Kessler was not what many regard as "a typical Polish Jew." He was an accomplished attorney, highly educated and spoke Polish as his first language. But in a way, Kessler was representative of a now destroyed subculture, the rich world of pre-war acculturated middle class Galician Jewry, a world which combined a deep love of Polish culture with a strong devotion to Jewish identity. Kessler was both an attorney and a poet, a shrewd observer for whom the horrors that he was experiencing only encouraged him to reaffirm his humanity through poetry of witness. It is especially important that this collection includes Kalwinski's memoirs. To hide Jews in German occupied Poland was to expose oneself and one's family to the risk of execution. It was not so easy to procure food and to secure a hiding place from the scrutiny of prying eyes at a time when Germans were conducting constant searches for food and for hidden arms. How does one do this for 24 people? This book is indeed an important addition to our knowledge of the Holocaust.”
-- Samuel Kassow, Charles H Northam professor of history, Trinity College (Hartford, CT), author of Who Will Write Our History?



Series: Jews of Poland

Jewish Thought in Dialogue: Essays on Thinkers, Theologies and Moral Theories.
by David Shatz
ISBN 978-1934843-42-0
480 pp. cloth
$65.00
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Publication Date: January, 2010

This carefully crafted collection of essays, Jewish Thought in Dialogue, offers creative interpretations of major Jewish texts and as well as original treatments of significant issues in Jewish theology and ethics. The collection includes philosophical readings of biblical narratives, analyses of topics in the thought of Maimonides, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook and Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, and critical and constructive examinations of divine providence, religious anthropology, free will, 9/11, evil, Halakhah and morality, altruism, autonomy in Jewish medical ethics, and the epistemology of religious belief. The author frequently brings Jewish philosophy and law into dialogue with contemporary Anglo-American philosophy.  The book serves scholars and students of Jewish philosophy and law and is suitable for inclusion in syllabi of undergraduate and graduate courses.

"A penetrating, keenly argued, profoundly wise, and often witty collection of essays by one of today's foremost Jewish philosophers."
--Warren Zev Harvey, Chair, Department of Jewish Thought, The Hebrew University of
   Jerusalem

 “David Shatz is an excellent analytic philosopher who has also written extensively on Jewish philosophy. His articles do not merely contribute to understanding  Jewish thinkers and thought. They also serve to broaden the philosophy of religion, making important issues and thinkers accessible and relevant to scholars working in other traditions. The essays will enhance scholarly appreciation of the philosophical dimensions of religious law, in a field  that largely ignores or marginalizes law's role in religion. This collection is particularly welcome and will contribute valuably to a broader discussion.”
—Wayne Proudfoot, Professor of Religion, Columbia University

"David Shatz's Jewish Thought in Dialogue is rigorous and refreshing. Reflecting both his training in philosophy and intimate familiarity with Judaic materials, Shatz's essays will compel you to rethink matters of significant concern to religion and ethics. Highly recommended!"
-- Gerald J. Blidstein, Professor Emeritus of Jewish Thought, Ben-Gurion University and recipient of the 2006 Israel Prize in Jewish Thought

"David Shatz's essays show us how, in the hands of a master, the analytic tools of Anglo-American philosophy can clarify and critically articulate the conceptual foundations of Judaism, and how halakhic and philosophical texts and discussions in the rabbinic tradition can enrich our understanidng of classical philosophical problems. These essays are constantly enlightening, closely argued and written with wit and insight. I learn from everything David Shatz writes."
-- Josef Stern, William H. Colvin Professor of Philosophy and Director, Center for Jewish Studies, University of Chicago

Series: Judaism and Jewish Life

The Saint's Impresarios: Dreamers, Healers, and Holy Men in Israel's Urban Periphery.
by Yoram Bilu
ISBN 978-1-934843-71-0
416 pp. cloth
$57.00
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Publication Date: December, 2009

The astonishing revival of saint worship in contemporary Israel was ignited by Moroccan Jews, who had immigrated to the new country in the 1950s and 1960s.  The Saint's Impresarios charts the vicissitudes of four new domestic shrines, established by Moroccan-born men and women in peripheral development towns, following an exciting revelation involving a saintly figure.  Each of the case studies discussing the life stories of the “saint impresarios” elaborates on a distinctive theme: dreams as psychocultural triggers for revelation; family and community responses to the initiative; female saint impresarios as healers; and the alleviation of life crises through the saint’s idiom. The initiatives are evaluated against the historical background of Jews in Morocco and the sociopolitical and cultural changes in present-day Israeli society. For readers interested in Israel and Jewish Studies, folk religion and mysticism, cultural and psychological anthropology, and Moroccan Jews. 

Series: Reference Library of Jewish Intellectual History

The Multicultural Challenge in Israel.
edited by Ohad Nachtomy, Avi Sagi
ISBN 978-1-934843-49-9
270 pp. cloth
$69.00
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Publication Date: November, 2009

Delving into Israel’s multifaceted society, editors Avi Sagi and Ohad Nachtomy, along with their distinguished contributors, explore the many ethnic and religious communities that comprise modern Israel and the ways in which they interact and often misunderstand each other. Detailing both the tensions between Israelis and Arab minorities as well as issues involving recent immigrants and the different religious sects within the Jewish community at large, this collection of essays covers diverse subjects such as Holocaust education, language rights, military service, and the balancing of religious with secular systems of law. An essential read for anyone searching for a better understanding of the challenges being faced in contemporary Israel.8

Series: Israel: Society, Culture, and History

Encounters of Consequence: Jewish Philosophy in the Twentieth Century and Beyond.
by Michael Oppenheim
ISBN 978-1934843-67-3
424 pp. cloth
$59.00
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Publication Date: October, 2009

Encounters of Consequence provides an introduction and deeper analysis of the situation of Jewish philosophy in the last century and beyond. It charts Jewish philosophy’s engagement with modernity and post-modernity along two overlapping axes – issues and persons – which often intersect. Key issues in modern Jewish philosophy are raised, including: the nature of Judaism and Jewish identity, the quests for meaning and continuity, the value of remaining a Jew, the relevance of Jewish law, as well as the challenges of secularism, modern history (including the Holocaust), feminism and religious pluralism. Featured are those philosophers of encounter – Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, and Emmanuel Levinas, as well as Joseph Soloveitchik, Gershom Scholem, Arthur Cohen, Eliezer Schweid, Emil Fackenheim, and Irving Greenberg.

Series: Judaism and Jewish Life

Three Jewish Journeys Through an Anthropologist’s Lens: From Morocco to the Negev, Zion to The Big Apple, the Closet to the Bimah.
by Moshe Shokeid
ISBN 978-1-934843-36-9
392 pp. cloth
$59.00
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Publication Date: September, 2009

The book presents a list of chapters that introduce a life-long career of ethnographic works carried out by a leading Israeli anthropologist. It presents Moshe Shokeid’s explorations, discoveries, and feelings about the vicissitudes of social life which he closely observed in three major arenas of contemporary Jewish life: Moroccan Jews who immigrated from Atlas Mountains to become farmers in the semi-arid Negev fields; Israeli-born citizens, who left their homes to start a new life in America; and finally, American gay Jews who chose to preserve their cultural heritage and maintain spiritual synagogue life as part of the mosaic of New York Jews. The panorama of Shokeid’s ethnographic journeys ends with a few chapters that display his methods of research and his personal experiences as participant observer among his fellow Jews in their unique path to promote their social and spiritual aspirations.

Series: Judaism and Jewish Life

New Rituals - Old Societies: Invented Rituals in Contemporary Israel.
by Nissan Rubin
ISBN 978-1-934843-35-2
240 pp. cloth
$59.00
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Publication Date: August, 2009

Rituals provide public solutions to some types of life crises. There are crises which beset individuals in modern and post-modern society which are not easily addressed by traditional
rituals. However, rites have not disappeared in contemporary society, but have merely changed their guise. Focusing on the secular society of contemporary Israel, this
collection examines rituals which were invented by communities and individuals in order to celebrate important turning points. In contemporary Israel a process of innovation of new rituals was introduced, either by the adoption of ritual elements from outside sources or by the transformation of existing Jewish symbols through the infusion of new contents originating in secular ideology. The term "personal definitional rites" coined here was introduced as a tool to interpret rites carried out by individuals undergoing a change in identity.

Series: Judaism and Jewish Life

The Communal Gadfly. Jews, British Jews and the Jewish State: Asking the Subversive Questions.
by Geoffrey Alderman
ISBN 978-1-934843-46-8
300 pp. cloth
$35.00
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Publication Date: July, 2009

Founded in 1841, the London-based Jewish Chronicle is the world’s oldest continuously circulating Jewish newspaper. Since 2002 its prestigious flagship “Comment” column has been written by Oxford-educated Dr Geoffrey Alderman, the leading authority on the Jews of modern Britain, a prolific and controversial scholar whose views have attracted warm support and sweeping condemnation in equal measure. This anthology brings together over a hundred of his Jewish Chronicle op-eds, on subjects as diverse as Jewish Orthodoxy, Ultra-Orthodoxy, Non-Orthodoxy, Islamic Judeophobia, Islamophobia and Jewish approaches to politics and sex. “I have tried to be funny,” Alderman declares, “when occasion has seemed to me to warrant the deployment of a certain humour, which can be a valuable didactic tool and a powerful medium of communication. I have on occasion employed sarcasm and irony. But I have always tried to be scrupulously accurate as to facts, and to locate my comment within that groundwork. Above all, true to my vocation as a rebel who has refused to toe the communal line, I have always presented a point of view that is unashamedly mine.”

Reviews:
"In The Communal Gadfly, Alderman, professor at the University of Buckingham and author of Modern British Jewry, collects more than a hundred of his weekly columns from the venerable Jewish Chronicle since 2002, ranging widely in topic and tone. Though it represents only one man’s perspective, Alderman’s grab-bag of a book will be appreciated by historians half a century from now who want to establish what issues British Jews deemed worthy of discussion and debate in these years." -- Josh Lambert, Tablet

"factually fair, mostly cleverly balanced, and, at times, whimsical... What is most attractive is the tone of Alderman's natural voice. He has a rare ability to float above stylistic expectations, producing a fluid textual mix of the academic, the idiomatic, the conversational and the Yiddish." -- Barbara Jacobs, Times Higher Education

Series: Out of the Series

Variations on the Messianic Theme. A Case Study of Interfaith Dialogue.
by Marion Wyse
ISBN 978-1-934843-47-5
262 pp. cloth
$49.00
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Publication Date: July, 2009

Over fifty years after the Holocaust, Marion Wyse explores interfaith dialogue between the Jewish and Christian communities and attempts to evaluate what goals these communities have reached and where they now stand. While many painful issues have been addressed and Jewish-Christian dialogue have achieved a solid respect for each other, the but basic disagreement over the Christian designation of Jesus as the Jewish messiah still stands. Theologians have suggested varying approaches but none convince both partners, so this work employs William James’ radical empirical method to show that the original Jewish messianic concept, the Christian shift, and the Jewish repudiation of the shift, can each be seen as valid faith variants.

Series: Judaism and Jewish Life

The Mind Behind the Gospels: A Commentary to Matthew 1–14.
by Herbert Basser
ISBN 978-1-934843-33-8
396 pp. cloth
$69.00
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Publication Date: July, 2009

This work offers a new translation of Matthew, graciously offered by Peter Zaas (with some minor revisions by David Malone and Herbert Basser). Basser gives us a verse-by-verse commentary to the first half of the Gospel in his study of Matthew through the lens of Jewish texts. These texts, skillfully interpreted by Basser, illuminate the powerful poetry and mystery behind much of Matthew’s genius in reworking evangelist’s sources. These Jewish materials provide a creative, cultural way of thinking about what God expects from human beings that is infused with the words and images of Matthew. Basser shows how Jewish idioms and artistry move the speeches, story, and figure of Jesus, through various layers of Church tradition, from a Jewish preacher to a Gentile savior. Each chapter of commentary is preceded by a preliminary discussion and the book is introduced by a scholarly yet accessible preface and introduction discussing the methodological issues of the commentary as a whole. In many ways, this book deepens Basser’s initial views of the New Testament in his Studies in Exegesis, Leiden and Boston, E.J. Brill, 2000. The present book will appeal to a broad audience of knowledgeable readers of any or no faith. Basser is presently completing his annotations to the Epistle of James for The Jewish Annotated New Testament to be published by Oxford University Press.

Reviews:
"Herbert Basser's commentary on Matthew 1-14 both offers fresh insights into the composition of the First Gospel and makes a major contribution to the understanding of the Jewish roots of Christian origins. Employing later compilations of Jewish literature along with the expected Tannaitic, Targumic and Qumran materials, he is able to construct an interpretive model of how Jews read Scripture, discerned orthopraxy and maintained community. His approach does not artificially force Judaism into a predetermined model; instead, it recognizes that within the diversity of that thought there exist particular interpretive strategies and rhetorical modes of argumentation. Confirming many of his connections are both Septuagintal readings and Syriac translations of both Hebrew biblical material and early (Greek) Christian literature. Basser's decision generally to avoid theoretical issues of synoptic parallels for criticism and textual variants is wise. The commentary does address synoptic parallels and textual variants where relevant."  -- Amy-Jill Levine, Professor of New Testament Studies at Vanderbilt University Divinity School

"this book can be genuinely, even startlingly, transformative. Certainly, it is one of the most seminal volumes I have read in recent years--as one brilliant "mind" from antiquity is here explicated by another from modernity, admirably providing "new and strong oars for navigating the Gospel material afloat in the sea of the Jewish literary tradition" (p. 18)."
-- Michael Cook, Hebrew Union College -- Jewish Institute of Religion, published on H-Judaic, January 2010

Series: Reference Library of Jewish Intellectual History

Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages.
by Raphael Jospe
ISBN 978-1-934843-09-3
620 pp. cloth
$65.00
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Publication Date: June, 2009

Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages presents an overview of the formative period of medieval Jewish philosophy, from its beginnings with Saadiah Gaon to its apex in Maimonides, when Jews living in Islamic countries and writing in Arabic were the first to develop a conscious and continuous tradition of philosophy.The book includes a dictionary of selected philosophic terms, and discusses the Greek and Arabic schools of thought that influenced the Jewish thinkers and to which they responded.The discussion covers: the nature of Jewish philosophy, Saadiah Gaon and the Kalam, Jewish Neo-Platonism, Bahya ibn Paqudah, Abraham ibn Ezra's philosophical Bible exegesis, Judah Ha-Levi's critique of philosophy, Abraham ibn Daud and the transition to Aristotelianism, Maimonides, and the controversy over Maimonides and philosophy.

Reviews:
"This volume is [a] great achievement. [Dr. Jospe's] book can be used as both a textbook and reference book because of its clear and extensive index of names and topics. Yet the clarity of the book's presentation and its readability make it a perfect introductory volume for a lay reader. His introductory chapter “What is Jewish Philosophy" alone is worth the price of the book because it surveys the wide variety of approaches of Jewish philosophy. There is, as Dr. Jospe makes very clear, no single, uniform Jewish philosophy. Thus, many Jews who understand this, become confused, throw up their hands and ask, "If so, what should I believe?" Jospe's excellent book helps people reach an answer." --Israel Drazen, The Jewish Eye

Series: Emunot: Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah

Mandelstam.
by Oleg Lekmanov
ISBN 978-1-934843-28-4
200 pp. cloth
$32.00
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Publication Date: January, 2010

Now available for the first time in English, Oleg Lekmanov’s critically acclaimed Mandelstam presents the maverick Russian poet’s life and work to a wider audience and includes the most reliable details of the poet’s life which were recently found and released from the KGB archives. Through his engaging narrative, Lekmanov carries the reader through Mandelstam’s early life and education in pre-revolutionary Petersburg and at the Sorbonne in Paris and in Heidelberg and his return to revolutionary Russia. Bold and fearless, he was quoted saying: “Only in Russia do they respect poetry. They even kill you for it.” Osip Mandelstam compared a writer to a parrot, saying that once his owner tires of him, he will cover his cage with black cloth, which becomes for literature a surrogate of night. In 1938, Mandelstam was arrested and six months later became a statistic:  over 500,000 political prisoners were sent to the Gulags in 1938; between 1931 and 1940, over 300,000 prisoners died in the Gulags - one of them was the poet Osip Mandelstam. This is the tragic story of his life pre-empted by the black cloth of Stalinism.

Series: Studies in Russian and Slavic Literatures, Cultures and History

The Twentieth Century Russian Short Story: A Critical Companion.
by Lyudmila Parts
ISBN 978-1-934843-44-4
300 pp. cloth
$45.00
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Publication Date: December, 2009

The 20th Century Russian Short Story: A Critical Companion is a collection of the most informative critical articles on some of the best twentieth-century Russian short stories from Chekhov and Bunin to Tolstaya and Pelevin. While each article focuses on a particular short story, collectively they elucidate the developments in each author’s oeuvre and in the subjects, structure, and themes of the twentieth-century Russian short story. American, European and Russian scholars discuss the recurrent themes of language’s power and limits, of childhood and old age, of art and sexuality, and of cultural, individual and artistic memory. The book opens with a discussion of the short story genre and its socio-cultural function. This book will be of value to all scholars of Russian literature, the Short Story, and Genre Theory.

Series: Cultural Revolutions: Russia in the Twentieth Century

Exemplary Bodies: Constructing the Jew in Russian Culture, 1880s to the Present.
by Henrietta Mondry
ISBN 978-1-934843-39-0
270 pp. cloth
$58.00
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Publication Date: November, 2009

This book explores the construction of the Jew’s physical and ontological body in Russian culture as represented in literature, film, and non-literary texts from the 1880s to the present. With the rise of the dominance of biological and racialist discourse in the 1880s, the depiction of Jewish characters in Russian literary and cultural productions underwent a significant change, as these cultural practices recast the Jew not only as an archetypal “exotic” and religious or class Other (as in Romanticism and realist writing), but as a biological Other whose acts, deeds, and thoughts were determined by racial differences. This Jew allegedly had physical and psychological characteristics that were genetically determined and that could not be changed by education, acculturation, conversion to Christianity, or change of social status. This stereotype has become a stable archetype that continues to operate in contemporary Russian society and culture.

Series: Borderlines: Russian and East European - Jewish Studies

The Superstitious Muse: Mythopoetic Thinking and Russian Literature.
by David Bethea
ISBN 978-1-934843-17-8
320 pp. cloth
$80.00
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Publication Date: November, 2009

For several decades David Bethea has written authoritatively on the “mythopoetic thinking” that lies at the heart of classical Russian literature, especially Russian poetry. His theoretically informed essays and books have made a point of turning back to issues of intentionality and biography at a time when authorial agency seems under threat of “erasure” and the question of how writers, and poets in particular, live their lives through their art is increasingly moot. The lichnost’ (personhood, psychic totality) of the given writer is all-important, argues Bethea, as it is that which combines the specifically biographical and the capaciously mythical in verbal units that speak simultaneously to different planes of being. Pushkin’s Evgeny can be one incarnation of the poet himself and an everyman rising up to challenge Peter’s new world order; Brodsky can be, all at once, Dante and Mandelstam and himself, the exile paying an Orphic visit to Florence (and, by ghostly association, Leningrad). It is this sort of metempsychosis, where the stories that constitute the Ur-texts of Russian literature are constantly reworked in the biographical myths shaping individual writers’ lives, that is Bethea’s primary focus. This collection contains a liberal sampling of Bethea’s most memorable previously published essays along with new studies prepared for this occasion.

Series: Studies in Russian and Slavic Literatures, Cultures and History

Early Modern Russian Letters: Texts and Contexts.
by Marcus Levitt
ISBN 978-1-934843-68-0
440 pp. cloth
$59.00
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Publication Date: October, 2009

Early Modern Russian Letters: Texts and Contexts brings together twenty essays by Marcus C. Levitt, a leading scholar of eighteenth-century Russian literature.  The essays address a spectrum of works and issues that shaped the development of modern Russian literature, from authorship and philosophy to gender and religion in Russian Enlightenment culture.  The first part of the collection explores the career and works of Alexander Sumarokov, who played a formative role in literary life of his day.  In the essays of the second part Levitt argues that the Enlightenment’s privileging of vision played an especially important role in eighteenth-century Russian self-image, and that its “occularcentrism” was profoundly shaped by Orthodox religious views. Early Modern Russian Letters offers a series of original and provocative explorations of a vital but little studied period.

Series: Studies in Russian and Slavic Literatures, Cultures and History

A Reader's Guide to Nabokov's "Lolita".
by Julian Connolly
ISBN 978-1-934843-65-9
208 pp. cloth
$40.00
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Publication Date: September, 2009

One of the most fascinating and controversial novels of the twentieth century, Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita is renowned for its innovative style and notorious for its subject matter and influence on popular culture.  A Reader’s Guide to Nabokov’s “Lolita” guides readers through the intricacies of Nabokov’s work and helps them achieve a better understanding of his rich artistic design.  The book opens with a detailed chronology of Nabokov’s life and literary career. Chapters include an analysis of the novel, a discussion of its precursors in Nabokov’s work and in world literature, an essay on the character of Dolly Haze (Humbert’s “Lolita”), and a commentary on the critical and cultural afterlife of the novel.  The volume concludes with an annotated bibliography of selected critical reading.  The guide should prove illuminating both for first-time readers of Lolita and for experienced re-readers of Nabokov’s text.

Series: Studies in Russian and Slavic Literatures, Cultures and History

Language and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Russia.
by Viktor Zhivov
ISBN 978-1-934843-12-3
524 pp. cloth
$78.00
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Publication Date: June, 2009

Victor Zhivov's Language and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Russia is one of the most important studies ever published on eighteenth-century Russia. Historians and students of Russian culture agree that the creation of a Russian literary language was key to the formation of a modern secular culture, and Language and Culture traces the growth of a vernacular language from the "hybrid Slavonic" of the late seventeenth century through the debates between "archaists and innovators" of the early nineteenth century. Zhivov's study is an essential work on the genesis of modern Russian culture; the aim of this translation is to make it available to historians and students of Russian culture.

Series: Studies in Russian and Slavic Literatures, Cultures and History

A Companion to Andrei Platonov's The Foundation Pit.
by Thomas Seifrid
ISBN 978-1-934843-08-6
200 pp. cloth
$40.00
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Publication Date: April, 2009

Written at the height of Stalin's first "five-year plan" for the industrialization of Soviet Russia and the parallel campaign to collectivize Soviet agriculture, Andrei Platonov's The Foundation Pit registers a dissonant mixture of utopian longings and despair. Furthermore, it provides essential background to Platonov's parody of the mainstream Soviet "production" novel, which is widely recognized as one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century Russian prose. In addition to an overview of the work's key themes, it discusses their place within Platonov's oeuvre as a whole, his troubled relations with literary officialdom, the work's ideological and political background, and key critical responses since the work's first publication in the West in 1973.

Series: Studies in Russian and Slavic Literatures, Cultures and History

Brodsky Through the Eyes of His Contemporaries, Vol. II.
by Valentina Polukhina
ISBN 978-1-934843-16-1
604 pp. cloth
$70.00
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Publication Date: November, 2008



The new volume of interviews draws on eye-witness accounts of Joseph Brodsky’s friends and family members, publishers, editors, translators, students, and fellow poets: John Le Carre, Oleg Tselkov, Petr Vail, Bengt Jangfeldt, Susan Sontag, Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott, and others.


This collection of 40 interviews illuminates an intriguing contemporary phenomenon and affords a fascinating insight into the American literary scene. Continuing the discussion begun in Vol. 1, this series of interviews contains important discussions on the style, ideas, and personality of one of the most brilliant and paradoxical poets of our time. Subtle, incisive, and rigorous in its critical evaluation, each discussion significantly advances our understanding of Brodsky's complex poetic world. All discussions are linked by core questions that are carefully and sometimes provocatively formulated. The interviews are published together with many unique photographs from the private archives of the author and the interviewees.

Series: Studies in Russian and Slavic Literatures, Cultures and History