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Alternate History: The Case of Nava Semel's IsraIsland and Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union

  • Adam Rovner

Date Published:

8 Jan, 2011

Abstract:

The article sketches the development of the genre of alternate history, also called allohistory and argues that allohistory may be treated as a philosophical genre that meditates on contingency and determinism. It examines two contemporary allohistorical novels, Israeli author Nava Semel's IsraIsland (2005) and American writer Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union (2007), that comment on the role of Israel in the Jewish imagination. The thematic and formal elements of these texts reveal how a version of allohistory can also function as a kind of detective fiction that may influence the reception of historiographic narratives.

 

Adam Rovner serves as Associate Professor of English and Jewish Literature at the University of Denver. He is the author of In the Shadow of Zion: Promised Lands before Israel (NYU Press, 2014). He has published numerous articles for both scholarly and general interest audiences in the US and abroad. More information is available at www.adamrovner.com .

Updated in March 2017

 

Publisher's Version

Volume 9, Issue 1
Last updated on 04/16/2020