Additional information
by Atlan Liliane (Author), Marguerite Feitlowitz (Translator)
This bi-lingual French-English language collection of Liliane Atlan's poetry and non-fiction prose will help introduce the French writer Liliane Atlan to the wider world English language reading audience. Atlan (1932-2012) a writer of plays, poetry and prose, defies easy categorization. She's known as a "Jewish writer," "a Holocaust writer," an originator of l'écriture féminine (French Feminist Writing), and a pioneering theater artist. Her writing is steeped in Jewish sources-- Talmud, Torah, mystical texts, as well as Jewish history--and her French is inflected with Hebrew, Ladino, and Yiddish. Thematically she draws upon personal memories, the testimonials of Holocaust survivors, and her intensive study of Jewish literature. Her own consciousness of Jewish identity was deeply impacted by the German occupation and the collaborationist regime of Vichy. In 1939, seven-year-old Liliane and her sister Rachel were sent into hiding with a gentile family in the Auvergne. Her maternal grandmother and uncles had been deported and died in Auschwitz. Surviving the war and the Holocaust, Liliane's parents provided relief and resources to refugees and survivors after the war. Liliane's interacted with these survivors and their personal stories deeply affected her. All of these experiences became the wellsprings for her writings which are dominated by one crucial question: how can we integrate within our conscience, without having to die in the attempt, the shattering experience of Auschwitz? Hence Atlan's poetry, prose and drama focused on the psychological effects of the Holocaust. With the recent rise and spread of Anti-Semitism in France and world-wide, Atlan, whose work is virtually unknown in the English speaking world, is being rediscovered as an acclaimed, respected voice for new generations of English readers. This volume makes her work available for the first time to readers in the United States, Great Britain and other parts of the world English language readership.
