Jewish Dreams and Nightmares

Robert Alter

1968

The case of Kafka, the acculturated Jew, shows how a man may feel his way into a body of collective history through his very consciousness of being outside it: Kafka brooded over the experience of the people from whom he derived, and I would argue that certain key images and states of awareness that were the product of European Jewish history…

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Creator Bio

Robert Alter

b. 1935

Robert Alter, born in New York City and brought up in Albany, is a biblical scholar and professor of Hebrew and comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley. As a longtime contributing editor at Commentary magazine, he brought Israeli literature and culture to the attention of the American reader. A literary critic and translator, he is the author of numerous monographs and is the recipient of the National Jewish Book Award and the Koret Jewish Book Award.

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