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"Harriet Murav has now provided English-language readers with the first comprehensive and most insightful study of Kovner and the image of the "Jew" in late imperial Russia. Her tale is well told and of extreme interest to those fascinated by the interaction between Jewish identity and anti-Semitism in the nineteenth-century."--Slavic Review
"In this investigation of the life and work of Avraam Uri Kovner...Harriet Murav deploys her actue analytical skills to fashion a study that should prove satisfying to both historians and literary scholars--a remarkable and rare achievement in today's academic world. Drawing thoughtfully from current post-modern and post-colonial theory...in a discussion that is blessedly accessible and jargon-free, she brings new insights to a crucial aspect of modern Jewish history that has indeed been in need of just such a fresh approach."--Journal of Jewish Studies
About the author
Harriet Murav is Professor of Comparative Literature, and Slavic Languages and Literature, at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She is the author of Russia's Legal Fictions (1998) and Holy Foolishness: Dostoevsky's Novels and the Poetics of Cultural Critique (Stanford, 1992).
Summary
This book offers the first full-length English-language biography of Avraam Uri Kovner, a fascinating and peculiar Russian-Jewish writer and criminal who lived at the end of the nineteenth century. It is also an examination of Russo-Jewish identity in the modern period and of larger questions of hybridity and performativity.
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"There is much here that is worthy of discussion and thought, and whether you agree or not with Murav, it is refreshing to perceive Russian-Jewish history and culture through a new theoretical paradigm."
