On the Edge of the Holocaust: The Shoah in Latin American Literature and Culture [Paperback]

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 writingAlberto Gerchunoff, Clarice Lispector, Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriela Mistral, and Joao Guimaraes RosaAizenberg 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 howthrough fiction, journalism, and activismthese five culture-makers opposed and fought fascism. At the same time, her readings of individual texts confront shopworn clich?s 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.

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.

Preface: Didnt All the Nazis Go to Argentina? Deutsches Requiem: Jorge Luis Borges Represents the Shoah Besieged in Berne: Clarice Lispector and the Murmur of Catastrophe Good-bye Jewish Gaucho: Alberto Gerchunoff, Anti-Nazi Diplomacy, Literature, Rescue: Jo?o Guimar?es Rosa, Consul in Hamburg Not Just Childrens Poetry: Gabriela Mistral, Consul in Nice Epilogue: The Anti-Nazis Were There Too Notes Index