In Their Surroundings

Localizing Modern Jewish Literatures in Eastern Europe

Edited by Efrat Gal-Ed Edited by Natasha Gordinsky Edited by Sabine Koller Edited by Yfaat Weiss

Book cover: In Their Surroundings

Extent: 278 pages

Publisher: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

Subjects: Cultural Studies, Jewish Studies, Literary Studies

Language: English

Hardback (Published)

(January 2023)

ISBN: 9783525306116

6.3 x 9.25 inches

Price: $63.00

In stock

Yiddish and Hebrew literary voices of the first half of the twentieth century in multiethnic Eastern Europe.


From the second half of the nineteenth century through to World War II, Eastern Europe, especially the territories that formerly made up the Pale of Settlement in the Tsarist Empire, witnessed a Jewish cultural flowering that went hand-in-hand with a multifaceted literary productivity in the Hebrew and Yiddish languages. Accompanied and sometimes directly affected by the dramatic political ruptures of the era, many authors experimented with various modernist poetics in the context of a culturally and literarily closely interwoven milieu. This beautifully illustrated catalogue presents for the first time some of the key figures of the era, including in each case a portrait of the author and a close reading of selected texts, including Yosef Hayim Brenner, Leah Goldberg, Moyshe Kulbak, and Deborah Vogel. Of particular interest here is the productive entanglement of cultures and literatures, of cultural contact and transfer, and the significance of space and place for the development of modern Jewish literatures.

  • Edited by Efrat Gal-Ed
  • Edited by Natasha Gordinsky
  • Edited by Sabine Koller
  • Edited by Yfaat Weiss