Popular Jewish Literature and Its Role in the Making of an Identity

“The problem of identity for the Jew has many distinct yet interrelated facets – religious, territorial, cultural, racial. . . . Paycha begins and ends with the cultural stereotype of Shylock which, with all its cliches, is ‘not completely dead’. Her study is a close reading of three major writers – George Eliot, Israel Zangwill and Philip Roth. Each presents a complex and difficult portrait of Jewish identity. . . . In its short space, this book achieves a remarkable subtlety in its drawing together of a wide range of reference from the literary to the religious and the political. . . . I find this a hugely suggestive book, bold and clear in its claims.” – David Jasper

Table of Contents: Introduction; Shylock Revisited ; Becoming somebody Else; Who am I?; I am a Jew; A Zionist?; The Safeguard; Zionism Betrayed; Exit Jew; Bibliography; Notes