On the Edge of the Holocaust

The Shoah in Latin American Literature and Culture

Edna Aizenberg

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 writing—Alberto Gerchunoff, Clarice Lispector, Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriela Mistral, and Joao Guimaraes Rosa—Aizenberg 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 how—through fiction, journalism, and activism—these five culture-makers opposed and fought fascism. At the same time, her readings of individual texts confront shopworn clichés 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.

Paper: $40 | E-book: $34.99
ISBN-13: 9781611688566
Pages: 200 | Size: 6 in. x 9 in.
Date Published: November 22, 2015

About the Author

Edna Aizenberg

Dr. Aizenberg began her academic career at the Universidad Central de Venezuela in Caracas, and was a founder of the U.C.V.’s School of Modern Languages. She began teaching at Marymount Manhattan College in the mid-1970s until her retirement only a few years ago. A world-renowned scholar of Borges, her book The Aleph Weaver (1984), initiated the study of the Shoah, politics and “reality” in Borges’s work. The book’s Spanish translation, El tejedor del Aleph: biblia, kábala y judaísmo en Borges (1986) won the Fernando Jeno Prize (Mexico, 1997). Among her numerous publications and essays, Dr. Aizenberg was also a member of the editorial boards of Variaciones Borges and EIAL, and served as an evaluator and consultant for the Modern Language Association, MacArthur Foundation; National Endowment for the Humanities; the Foundation for Jewish Culture, and the Israel Science Foundation.

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