THE FAR EAST – THE MIDDLE EAST. ISRAEL’S PRESENCE IN FRANCOPHONE LITERATURE
(Till R. Kuhnle, Carmen Oszi, Saskia S. Wiedner (eds.), Orient lointain – proche Orient, La présence d’Israël dans la littérature francophone (Tübingen: Editions Narr Verlag, 2011), ISBN 978-3-8233- 65167-7, pp. 160
Speranta Sofia MILANCOVICI*
The University of Augsburg hosted, in late 2008, the sixth edition of the Francophone and Roman Studies Researchers’ Congress (Frankoromanistentag). Following the workshop conducted on this occasion and dedicated to the relations between France, the francophone space and Israel, from the perspective of literature, philosophy and history of ideas, appeared three years later the volume entitled The Far East – The Middle East, Israel’s Presence in Francophone Literature, bringing together studies signed by researchers from Germany, Israel, France, Austria, Portugal, Brazil and the United States.
The heterogeneity of the authors’ thinking, coming from different geographical areas, but also with different mentalities and different cultural mindsets, leads, naturally, to different approaches of the proposed issue. However, all the studies converge towards the idea of the Jewish particular collective identity, an inconsistent people whose contribution to the francophone culture, and also to the global one, cannot be denied, but which, however, is always compelled to review its place and condition in the world.