On the Edge of the Holocaust: The Shoah in Latin American Literature and Culture - Hardcover

Edna Aizenberg

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1611688558 ISBN 13: 9781611688559

Publisher: Brandeis University Press, 2015

Synopsis

In this bold study, Edna Aizenberg offers a much-needed corrective to both Latin American literary scholarship and popular assumptions that the whole of Latin America served as a Nazi refuge both during and after World War II. Analyzing the treatment of the Shoah by five leading figures in Argentine, Brazilian, and Chilean writing - Alberto Gerchunoff, Clarice Lispector, Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriela Mistral, and Joao Guimaraes Rosa - Aizenberg illuminates how Latin American intellectuals engaged with the horrific information that reached them regarding the Holocaust, including the sympathy and collaboration of their own governments with the Nazis. Aizenberg emphasizes how - through fiction, journalism, and activism - these five culture-makers opposed and fought fascism. At the same time, her readings of individual texts confront shopworn cliches about Latin American writing and literature, suggesting deeper and richer dimensions to many canonical works. This interdisciplinary book fills critical gaps in both Holocaust and Latin American studies, and will be of great interest to scholars and students in both fields.

About this title

Review:

"This is a valuable contribution to Latin American and Holocaust studies, and a useful, recommended addition to Judaica collections in academic and high school libraries."-- "Association of Jewish Libraries Newsletter"

Edna Aizenberg's solid scholarship and close readings provide new understandings of major Latin American writers, as well as an antidote to misconceptions about Latin American culture.-- "Holocaust and Genocide Studies"

Aizenberg's goals of filling a void in the studies of the Shoah and Latin America, as well as redeeming the work of several important Latin American intellectuals during and after the Holocaust, are definitely achieved in this book."-- "Studies in 20th and 21st Century Literature"

"Inspiring. . . . the book is very topical when evoking the commitment of literati and intellectuals in difficult times."-- "Iberoamericana"

About the Author:

EDNA AIZENBERG is professor emeritus of Hispanic studies at Marymount Manhattan College in New York. An internationally recognized scholar of Borges, she is the author of Books and Bombs in Buenos Aires: Borges, Gerchunoff, and Argentine Jewish Writing.

About this edition

• Publisher: Brandeis University Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1611688558
• ISBN 13: 9781611688559
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224