Edited volume tracing the development of a new generation of German Jewish writers, offering fresh interpretations of individual works, and probing the very concept of "German Jewish literature." The 1990 reunification of Germany gave rise to a new generation of writers who write in German, identify as both German and Jewish, and often also sustain cultural affiliations with places such as Russia, Azerbaijan, or Israel. This edited volume traces the development of this new literature into the present, offers fresh interpretations of individual works, and probes the very concept of "German Jewish literature." A central theme is the transformation ofmemory at a time when the Holocaust is moving into greater historical distance while the influx of new immigrant groups to Germany brings other past trauma into view. The volume's ten original essays by scholars from Europe and the US reframe the debates about Holocaust memory and contemporary German culture. The concluding interviews with authors Mirna Funk and Olga Grjasnowa offer a glimpse into the future of German Jewish literature. Contributors: Luisa Banki, Caspar Battegay, Helen Finch, Mirna Funk, Katja Garloff, Olga Grjasnowa, Elizabeth Loentz, Andree Michaelis-Koenig, Agnes Mueller, Jessica Ortner, Jonathan Skolnik, Stuart Taberner. Katja Garloff is Professor of German and Humanities at Reed College. Agnes Mueller is the College of Arts & Sciences Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at the University of South Carolina.

Explores the storytelling of Anna Seghers and other 20th-century writers who faced the tensions between aesthetics and politically conscious writing, between conformity and resistance. While Walter Benjamin, in his famous essay "The Storyteller" (1936), lamented the decline of the storytelling tradition in the age of the modernist novel, Anna Seghers and other twentieth-century German writers went on to chronicle the century's darkest days in creative and compelling ways. This volume is at its heart a tribute to Germanist Helen Fehervary, whose work, particularly on the prose of Anna Seghers, continues to inspire scholars who examine narration and storytelling. The subtitle quotation, "for once, telling it all from the beginning," is a translation of the phrase "einmal alles von Anfang an erzahlen," from Seghers's exile novel Transit, in which she told notonly her own story but that of countless others who faced existential challenges in their attempts to escape the Nazi regime. This volume examines a number of such writers, exploring the tensions between aesthetics and politically conscious writing, as well as individual struggles involving conformity and resistance in a totalitarian state. Contributors: Peter Beicken, Hunter Bivens, Kristy R. Boney, Ute Brandes, Stephen Brockmann, Sylvia Fischer, Jost Hermand, Kristen Hetrick, Robert C. Holub, Weijia Li, Elizabeth Loentz, Michaela Peroutkova, Benjamin Robinson, Christiane Zehl Romero, Marc Silberman, Andy Spencer, Luke Springman, Amy Kepple Strawser, Jennifer Marston William. Kristy R. Boney is Associate Professor of German at the University of Central Missouri. Jennifer Marston William is Professor of German and Head of the School of Languages and Cultures at Purdue University.