Studies in the History of Russian-Israeli Literature

“While this book features many different authors and diverse objects of investigation, it also creates a panoramic view of Russian-Israeli literature—both in style and in chronology. The book should be of great interest to scholars and general readers alike. The very notion of ‘Russian-Israeli literature’ (similarly to the notion of ‘Russian-American literature’) will doubtless illicit questions. Some readers might even ask: And where does the writer belong if she or he has two addresses, sometimes even simultaneously, in two different countries? In what category should we place translations into the Russian language? What is the principal difference between Russian-Israeli literature and, say, Yiddish-Israeli or Polish-Israeli literatures? In other words, this book not only offers a great deal of new materials but also invites us to think of the directions of further research.”

—Gennady Estraikh, Professor, New York University, author of Transatlantic Russian Jewishness

“Russian-Israeli literature is, perhaps, the most fascinating of all the literatures to have been created and still being created in the Russian language outside the boundaries of the Russian Empire, the USSR and the post-Soviet spaces. While the title of this book contains the modest term ‘studies,’ the book in fact carries out a tremendously complex task: to conceptualize the corpus of Russian-Israeli literature by concentrating the work along two principal axes, historical-cultural and generic. Additionally challenges faced by the book’s editors and contributors had to do with the fact that a significant part of Russian-Israeli literature resists cross-cultural translation into any of the dominant languages of contemporary culture. Much of what has been created by Russian-Israeli writers could be translated as ‘thoughtcrime.’  The project of delineating the historical contours of Russian-Israeli literature and to understand its provenance and development lies at the very heart of this remarkable book.”

—Dennis Sobolev, Professor, University of Haifa, author of The Split World of Gerard Manley Hopkins 

“Studies in the History of Russian-Israeli Literature is a unique and peerless project. Despite the fragmentary nature of the genre stated in the title, this collection captures many aspects of the previously unexplored, multibranched phenomenon of Russian-Israeli literature. The chronological span renders this collection particularly ponderous as it allows the reader to conceptualize Russian-Israeli literature as one of the most original, historically varied ‘hyphenated’ literatures with its own fairly rather rich traditions.

The book brings together some of today’s leading researchers from a number of countries, thus reflecting a diversity of viewpoints, epistemological contexts and theoretical approaches; such diversity has never before been seen in any works on this subject. And this motley gathering of authors constitutes not a shortcoming but rather one of the collection’s great merits for it betokens the very complex nature Russian-Israeli literature, having come about at the intersection of various geographical and cultural identities and styles, which evolved and changed over the course of the waves of aliyah, political regimes, and many other circumstances. 

I urge you to read this book. It will be of great interest to all those interested not only in Israeli and Russian, but also the multilingual and multifaceted Jewish culture of different epoch.”

—Klavdia Smola, Professor, University of Dresden, author of Inventing the Tradition: Contemporary Russian-Jewish Literature