Writer on the Run: German-Jewish Identity and the Experience of Exile in the Life and Work of Henry William Katz

Abstract

This is the first academic treatment of the life and work of Henry William Katz (1906-1992) who has been forgotten by scholars and critics for fifty years although his first novel won him the Heinrich-Heine-Prize in exile in 1937. From a combined literary, historical, biographical and sociological perspective, Ena Pedersen analyses Katz's depiction on the Eastern European Jews in Galicia, Weimar Germany and in exile, focusing on the problems of anti-Semitism, assimilation, German-Jewish symbiosis, and Jewish identity. The book further provides a first biography of Katz and places him in the context of German exile literature through comparisons with contemporary Jewish and non-Jewish writers in exile.