Jew in The New Germany

Henryk Broder, one of the most controversial and engaging writers in Germany today, has been a thorn in the side of the Establishment for thirty years. The son of two Polish Holocaust survivors, Broder is not only a trenchant political critic and observant social essayist but an invaluable chronicler of the Jewish experience in late twentieth-century Germany. This volume collects eighteen of Broder's essays, translated for the first time into English. The first was written in 1979 and the most recent deals with the post-9/11 realities of the war on terrorism and its effects on the countries of Europe. Other essays address the debate over the construction of a Holocaust memorial in Berlin, the German response to the 1991 Gulf War, the politics of German reunification, and the rise of the new German nationalism. A Jew in the New Germany showcases Broder's biting wit, his sense of history, and his ability to draw broader connections between what appear at first glance to be minor or isolated incidents. In these essays he charts the recent evolution of German Jewish relations, using his own outsider status to hold up a mirror to the German people and point out that things have not changed for German Jews as much as non-Jews might think. Again and again he shows himself to be chillingly prophetic, especially regarding Israel and the crisis in the Middle East. A Jew in the New Germany is a bold new addition to the German Jewish tradition of caustic cultural commentary from a writer whose perspicacity and candor have turned him from a voice in the wilderness to one of the most widely read essayists in Germany today.