Random Destinations

Random Destinations examines how novels and short stories portray those who managed to escape from Central Europe in the 1930s following the rise of Nazism. They faced many concrete and psychological problems at their random destinations: language acquisition, adjustment to different moves, fitting into the community, coming to terms with having been rejected by their homeland, the conflict between the desire to remember and/or forget their past, and, above all, the need to reshape their identities. Their personal struggles are contextualized within their historical situation, both global and specific to their new locale. The book argues that fiction, by taking ordinary escapees' difficulties into account, paradoxically offers a more subtle and true picture than sociological studies, that have tended to foreground the successes of a few outstanding individuals.

PART I: TO THE READER 'Shards from the Explosion'; L.Furst PART II: LONDON 'Twin Souls'; A.Brookner 'The Hidden Abyss'; G.Tindall 'A Success Story'; R.Prawer Jhabvala PART III: BRITISH PROVINCES 'Try to Forget'; M.Duffy 'To Serve Under the Chimney'; W.G.Sebald PART IV: NEW YORK 'The Great Loss'; B.Malamud 'An Abundance of Happiness'; R.Prawer Jhabvala 'A Bizarre Double Game'; I.Bashevis Singer PART V: US PROVINCES 'Can You Harmonize?'; C.Asch 'An Inconsequential Appendix and Coda'; R.Jarrell PART VI: INDIA 'Accepting but not Accepted'; A.Desai 'The Hanger-O'; R.Prawer Jhabvala 'A Bit in the Middle of Nowhere'; L.Furst PART VII: NOTES