ABOUT THIS BOOK

"The Elsewhere." Or, midbar-biblical Hebrew for both "wilderness" and "speech." A place of possession and dispossession, loss and nostalgia. But also a place that speaks. Ingeniously using a Talmudic interpretive formula about the disposition of boundaries, Newton explores narratives of "place, flight, border, and beyond." The writers of The Elsewhere are a disparate company of twentieth-century memoirists and fabulists from the Levant (Palestine/Israel, Egypt) and East Central Europe. Together, their texts-cunningly paired so as to speak to one another in mutually revelatory ways-narrate the paradox of the "near distance."

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Adam Zachary Newton is Jane and Rowland Blumberg Centennial Professor in English at the University of Texas at Austin. His previous books include Narrative Ethics, Facing Black and Jew: Literature as Public Space, and most recently The Fence and the Neighbor: Levinas, Leibowitz, and Israel Among the Nations.

REVIEWS

"If for Kafka writing was a form of prayer, literary criticism is similarly for Adam Zachary Newton a quest for the sacred, for the primordial space in which the divine voice was once heard. His journey through the literary landscapes of the diverse writers with whom he shares this quest is itself wholly human and terrestrial-its own 'archive of the feet'-but therefore also profoundly inspiring. He has written an extraordinarily intelligent and probing work."-Paul Mendes-Flohr, University of Chicago Divinity School

“Adam Zachary Newton brings remarkable insight and sensitivity to his reading of place and identity-both Jewish and otherwise-across an impressively wide range of literatures and intellectual terrains. His book reveals a depth of understanding and an ethical scrupulosity that is rare among contemporary interpreters. A beautiful and moving contribution, learned and profound."- Susannah Heschel, author of Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus

"A striking, original piece of work that combines ethical imperative and modernist imagination to produce a beautiful constellation of historical memories. Intelligent and elegant, a book that will be admired for its imaginative style and compassionate critical voice."-Rebecca L. Walkowitz, University of Wisconsin-Madison

TABLE OF CONTENTS

<table of contents, p. ix>
Contents
Dedication	000
Introduction	000
1. Place From Place, and Place From Flight: W. G. Sebald's The Emigrants and Aharon 
Appelfeld's The Iron Tracks	000
2. Flight From Flight, and Flight From Border: Witold Gombrowicz's Diary and A Kind of 
Testament and Essays and Short Fiction by and Bruno Schulz	000
3. Border From Border: Elias Canetti's The Tongue Set Free and The Voices of Marrakesh and 
Gregor von Rezzori's The Snows of Yesteryear	000
4. Border From Beyond: André Aciman's Out of Egypt and Edward Said's Out of Place	000
5. Beyond From Beyond: Dan Pagis's Abba and Anton Shammas's Arabesques	000

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