Home thoughts from abroad

Here is the first critique of modern Hebrew literature to examine the vital concept of place through which we learn about some of the pressing concerns and issues of contemporary Israelis. This book focuses on six novels in which characters leave Israel but then return, manifesting the tension between home and abroad in the dialectics of outside and inside. This allows the authors to use place on a thematic as well as a structural level. Thus, Europe often assumes a metaphoric, or, alternatively, a metonymic function. Places may also be presented by contrasting their analogous descriptions or their social and cultural aspects. Finally, place may be used to analyse the soul, for external place images can reveal the inner reaches of the psyche.