Nostalgia for a Foreign Land

"When over a million Russians came to Israel between 1990 and 2010, they brought with them brains and brawn, violins and vodka, and the Russian language. But what could be more 'Trayf' in Israel then the Russian language? Isn't Russian in Israel a kind of Golden Calf, i.e. a manifestation of the psychological sediment formed from generations educated 'Their' way? And yet the Russian Jewish writers who 'repatriated' to Israel used Russian to give life to a 'metaphysical' literature, as Roman Katsman calls it. It is a literature that rejects the surface and speaks an inner language of transcendence and alienation. It is a Jewish literature that gives voice to an ephemeral moment--the Jew who lives in Hebrew, but whose origins in Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky provide a key to home anywhere and everywhere." -- Brian Horowitz, Professor of Russian and Chair of Jewish Studies, Tulane University
"Roman Katsman’s pioneering Nostalgia for a Foreign Land addresses one of the most impressive, unusual and intriguing literary phenomena in Russian since 1991: Russian-language prose in Israel. While aspiring to its synthetic study, the book covers a broad range of writers from an immensely popular contemporary fiction writer to a leading member of an experimental avant-garde group. This is an excellent, illuminating and cogent work; its in-depth literary analysis is rich in detail. The book makes no attempt to embellish the literary works it analyzes; their unquestionable aesthetic achievements and sometimes problematic ideologies are examined with attention and unfailing honesty. Within broader a context, this is a very significant contribution to the understanding of Jewish literature in Russian, as well as contemporary Jewish literary writing.” -- Dennis Sobolev, University of Haifa
With great knowledge of cultural studies and philosophy and with an impressive interpretive depth, Katsman … reflects on the works themselves. He manages to combine an oeuvre’s central semantic aspects in a comprehensive philosophical interpretation. -- Klavdia Smola * East European Jewish Affairs *