Making German Jewish Literature Anew

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In Making German Jewish Literature Anew, Katja Garloff traces the development of German Jewish literature from 1990 to the present and offers a new theory of Jewish diaspora literature. Whereas earlier studies focused on the second generation of German Jewish writers after the Holocaust, Garloff's analysis extends to third-generation writers, many of whom come from Eastern European or mixed-religion backgrounds. The works of these more recent writers, include Benjamin Stein, Lena Gorelik, Jan Himmelfarb, and Katja Petrowskaja. Garloff suggests that the emergence of a new German Jewish literature affords a unique opportunity to examine the relationship between literature and the formation of group identity. Throughout the Making German Jewish Literature Anew, Garloff asks what exactly marks a given text as Jewish--the author's identity, intended audience, thematic concerns, or stylistic choices--and reflects on existing definitions of Jewish literature. Making German Jewish Literature Anew is innovatively structured around a series of founding gestures--performing authorship, remaking memory, and claiming places. Garloff contends that these founding gestures are literary strategies that reestablish the very possibility of a continually reinvented German Jewish literature into the twenty-first century.