Author Description

Focusing on the way Jewish history - particularly the Holocaust - and tradition inform post-war Canadian and American Jewish literature, A House of Words offers innovative readings of the works of such influential writers as Saul Bellow, Leonard Cohen, Eli Mandel, Mordecai Richler, Chava Rosenfarb, Philip Roth, and Nathanael West. Norman Ravvin highlights the concerns that these disparate writers share as Jewish writers, as well as placing their work in the context of the broader traditions of multiculturalism, post-colonial writing, and critical theory. At once scholarly and poetic, A House of Words will appeal to the general reader of Canadian, American, and Jewish literature and history, as well as to specialists in these fields.