Paperback
978-1-77212-657-0Size: 6" x 9"
Pages: 320
epub
978-1-77212-694-5Pages: 368
Leaving Other People Alone
Diaspora, Zionism, and Palestine in Contemporary Jewish Fiction
By Aaron Kreuter
Leaving Other People Alone reads contemporary North American Jewish fiction about Israel/Palestine through an anti-Zionist lens. Aaron Kreuter argues that since Jewish diasporic fiction played a major role in establishing the centroperipheral relationship between Israel and the diaspora, it therefore also has the potential to challenge, trouble, and ultimately rework this relationship. Kreuter suggests that any fictional work that concerns itself with Israel/Palestine and Zionism comes with heightened responsibilities, primarily to make narrative space for the Palestinian worldview, the dispossessed Other of the Zionist project. In engaging prose, the book features a wide range of scholarship and new, compelling readings of texts by Theodor Herzl, Leon Uris, Philip Roth, Ayelet Tsabari, and David Bezmozgis. Throughout, Kreuter develops his concept of diasporic heteroglossia, which is fiction’s unique ability to contain multiple voices that resist and write back against national centres. This work makes an important and original contribution to Jewish studies, diaspora studies, and world literature.
Book details
Publication date: May 2023Features: Index
Keywords: Israel; Palestine; Jewish Fiction; Diaspora; World Literature; Diasporic Fiction; Ethical Responsibility; Anti-Zionist; Theodor Herzl; Leon Uris; Philip Roth; Ayelet Tsabari; David Bezmozgis; Daniel and Jonathan Boyarin; Mikhail Bakhtin
Subject(s): LITERARY CRITICISM / Jewish, Literary Studies, Literary Studies / Literary Criticism, Area Studies, Area Studies / Diaspora Studies, Area Studies, Area Studies / Palestinian Studies, Area Studies, Area Studies / Middle Eastern Studies, LITERARY CRITICISM / American / General, LITERARY CRITICISM / Canadian, LITERARY CRITICISM / Comparative Literature, Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers, Comparative literature, Literary studies: postcolonial literature, Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000, Canadian Literature, Humanities, Comparative Literature / Jewish Diaspora, Israel; Palestine; Jewish Fiction; Diaspora; World Literature; Diasporic Fiction; Ethical Responsibility; Anti-Zionist; Theodor Herzl; Leon Uris; Philip Roth; Ayelet Tsabari; David Bezmozgis; Daniel and Jonathan Boyarin; Mikhail Bakhtin
Publisher(s): The University of Alberta Press
Book details
Publication date: May 2023Features: Index
Keywords: Israel; Palestine; Jewish Fiction; Diaspora; World Literature; Diasporic Fiction; Ethical Responsibility; Anti-Zionist; Theodor Herzl; Leon Uris; Philip Roth; Ayelet Tsabari; David Bezmozgis; Daniel and Jonathan Boyarin; Mikhail Bakhtin
Subject(s): LITERARY CRITICISM / Jewish, Literary Studies, Literary Studies / Literary Criticism, Area Studies, Area Studies / Diaspora Studies, Area Studies, Area Studies / Palestinian Studies, Area Studies, Area Studies / Middle Eastern Studies, LITERARY CRITICISM / American / General, LITERARY CRITICISM / Canadian, LITERARY CRITICISM / Comparative Literature, Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers, Comparative literature, Literary studies: postcolonial literature, Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000, Canadian Literature, Humanities, Comparative Literature / Jewish Diaspora, Israel; Palestine; Jewish Fiction; Diaspora; World Literature; Diasporic Fiction; Ethical Responsibility; Anti-Zionist; Theodor Herzl; Leon Uris; Philip Roth; Ayelet Tsabari; David Bezmozgis; Daniel and Jonathan Boyarin; Mikhail Bakhtin
Publisher(s): The University of Alberta Press
Aaron Kreuter. Aaron Kreuter is a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Comparative Study in Literature, Art, and Culture at Carleton University. He is the author of Arguments for Lawn Chairs; You and Me, Belonging; and Shifting Baseline Syndrome, which was nominated for the Governor General's Award for English-language poetry in 2022. He lives in Toronto.
Aaron Kreuter incorporates a wide range of scholarly work and historically contextualizes the spaces under discussion. Leaving Other People Alone is an important book. Brett Ashley Kaplan, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Leaving Other People Alone, is without a doubt, the most morally imaginative and critically compelling exploration of the Jewish literary soul to come along in many years. Through eloquent and genuinely exciting close readings, Kreuter offers brilliant new approaches to considering indigeneity, diasporic identities and related forms of conflicted belonging. His highly original formulation of “diasporic heteroglossia,” a bold conceptual approach to the ethics of repudiating territorialism, offers the kind of rare paradigm that truly transforms the conversation and will likely provoke and inspire scholars in Jewish Studies and well beyond for years to come. Ranen Omer-Sherman, author of Amos Oz: Legacy of a Writer
One of the key questions Aaron Krueter asks in Leaving Other People Alone is what the books and authors studied reveal about the relationship between the Jewish diaspora, Israel, Zionism, and the ethical potential of diaspora. Isabelle Hesse, University of Sydney
Introduction 1
Playing Jewish Geography
1 | Philip Goes to Israel 27
Jewish Justice, Diasporism, Palestinian Voices, and Zionist Self-Censorship in Operation Shylock
2 | Herzl Meets Uris 77
Altneuland and Exodus in Diasporic Comparison
3 | Arab Jews, Polycentric Diasporas, Porous Borders 131
Israel/Palestine in the Short Fiction of Ayelet Tsabari
4 | “The Jewish Semitone” 189
Zionism and the Soviet Jewish Diaspora in The Betrayers
Conclusion 237
Diasporic Heteroglossia, Second Cousins, Learning to Be Each Other’s Guests
Notes 243
Works Cited 277
Index 293
Aaron Kreuter. Aaron Kreuter is a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Comparative Study in Literature, Art, and Culture at Carleton University. He is the author of Arguments for Lawn Chairs; You and Me, Belonging; and Shifting Baseline Syndrome, which was nominated for the Governor General's Award for English-language poetry in 2022. He lives in Toronto.
Aaron Kreuter incorporates a wide range of scholarly work and historically contextualizes the spaces under discussion. Leaving Other People Alone is an important book. Brett Ashley Kaplan, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Leaving Other People Alone, is without a doubt, the most morally imaginative and critically compelling exploration of the Jewish literary soul to come along in many years. Through eloquent and genuinely exciting close readings, Kreuter offers brilliant new approaches to considering indigeneity, diasporic identities and related forms of conflicted belonging. His highly original formulation of “diasporic heteroglossia,” a bold conceptual approach to the ethics of repudiating territorialism, offers the kind of rare paradigm that truly transforms the conversation and will likely provoke and inspire scholars in Jewish Studies and well beyond for years to come. Ranen Omer-Sherman, author of Amos Oz: Legacy of a Writer
One of the key questions Aaron Krueter asks in Leaving Other People Alone is what the books and authors studied reveal about the relationship between the Jewish diaspora, Israel, Zionism, and the ethical potential of diaspora. Isabelle Hesse, University of Sydney
Introduction 1
Playing Jewish Geography
1 | Philip Goes to Israel 27
Jewish Justice, Diasporism, Palestinian Voices, and Zionist Self-Censorship in Operation Shylock
2 | Herzl Meets Uris 77
Altneuland and Exodus in Diasporic Comparison
3 | Arab Jews, Polycentric Diasporas, Porous Borders 131
Israel/Palestine in the Short Fiction of Ayelet Tsabari
4 | “The Jewish Semitone” 189
Zionism and the Soviet Jewish Diaspora in The Betrayers
Conclusion 237
Diasporic Heteroglossia, Second Cousins, Learning to Be Each Other’s Guests
Notes 243
Works Cited 277
Index 293
