Research Catalog

Title

Gulag literature and the literature of Nazi camps : an intercontexual reading / Leona Toker.

Author

Toker, Leona

Publication

Bloomington, IN : Indiana University Press, [2019]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xii, 287 pages; 24 cm.

Summary

Devoted to the ways in which Holocaust literature and gulag literature provide contexts for each other, Leona Toker shows how the prominent features of one shed light on the veiled features and methods of the other. Toker views these narratives and texts against a background of historical information about the Soviet and Nazi regimes of repression. Writers at the center of this work include Varlam Shalamov, Primo Levi, Elie Wiesel, and Ka-Tzetnik, along with Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, Evgeniya Ginzburg, and Jorge Semprún, all of whom illuminate the discussion. Toker's twofold analysis concentrates on the narrative qualities of the works as well as how each text documents the writer's experience. She provides insight into how fictionalized narrative can double as historical testimony, how references to events might have become obscure owing to the passage of time and cultural diversity of readers, and how these references form new meaning in the text. Toker, well known as a skillful interpreter of gulag literature, offers new thinking about how gulag literature and Holocaust literature enable a better understanding about testimony in the face of evil.

Series Statement

Jewish literature and culture

Uniform Title

Jewish literature and culture.

Subject

• Solzhenit︠s︡yn, Aleksandr Isaevich, 1918-2008
• Shalamov, Varlam
• Levi, Primo, 1919-1987
• Wiesel, Elie, 1928-2016
• Semprún, Jorge
• Ka-tzetnik 135633, 1909-2001
• Nazi concentration camps in literature > 20th century
• Nazi concentration camps > Soviet Union
• Prisoners' writings, Soviet > History and criticism
• Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), in literature > History and criticism

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 247-269) and index.

Contents

Intercontextuality: Introduction -- The Gulag and Nazi camps: from improvisation to stability -- Two strands of concentration-camp literature: a brief history of an entanglement -- The Muselmann and the Dokhodiaga -- Forced labor -- The drowned and the reprieved -- On the way to resistance -- Faith -- End games -- Survivor guilt -- Concluding reflections.

Call Number

JFE 20-2650

ISBN

• 9780253043511
• 0253043514
• 9780253043535
• 0253043530

LCCN

2019287176

OCLC

1138705804

Author

Toker, Leona, author.

Title

Gulag literature and the literature of Nazi camps : an intercontexual reading / Leona Toker.

Publisher

Bloomington, IN : Indiana University Press, [2019]

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

Jewish literature and culture

Jewish literature and culture.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 247-269) and index.

Research Call Number

JFE 20-2650