Music from a Speeding Train Jewish Literature in Post-Revolution Russia [Hardcover]

Music from a Speeding Trainexplores the uniquely Jewish space created by Jewish authors working within the limitations of the Soviet cultural system. It situates Russian- and Yiddish- language authors in the same literary universeone in which modernism, revolution, socialist realism, violence, and catastrophe join traditional Jewish texts to provide the framework for literary creativity. These writers represented, attacked, reformed, and mourned Jewish life in the pre-revolutionary shtetl as they created new forms of Jewish culture.

The book emphasizes the Soviet Jewish response to World War II and the Nazi destruction of the Jews, disputing the claim that Jews in Soviet Russia did not and could not react to the killings of Jews. It reveals a largely unknown body of Jewish literature beginning as early as 1942 that responds to the mass killings. By exploring works through the early twenty-first century, the book reveals a complex, emotionally rich, and intensely vibrant Soviet Jewish culture that persisted beyond Stalinist oppression.

Music from a Speeding Trainchallenges the view that there was no Jewish culture in the Soviet Union by exploring over one hundred Russian and Yiddish works from the 1920s to the turn of the 21st century. This cogent book demonstrates viability and resilience of Jewish literature in Russia from the late 19th century to the current day. This is a truly admirable book, marked by keen understanding, insight, and particular sympathy, if not love, for the Jewish people. . . Highly recommended. Harriet Murav is Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures and Comparative and World Literature at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and author ofIdentity Theft: The Jew in Imperial Russia and the Case of Avraam Uri Kovner(Stanford, 2003) andHoly Foolishness: Dostoevsky's Novels & the Poetics of Cultural Critique(Stanford, 1992). Murav has written an unusually rich and engaging book, which will l3,