[O]riginal, insightful, and illuminating readings of Heinrich Heine (chapter 3), Franz Kafka (chapter 4), Bruno Schulz (chapters 5 and 6), Jorge Luis Borges (chapter 7), and Paul Celan (chapter 9). ... Highly recommended [for] advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals.

CHOICE

In a work rich in critical insight and alive to the power and magic of religious narrative and theology, Kitty Millet's marvelous new book argues for the fundamental role that Jewish mysticism and the Kabbalah have played in the formation of modern literature. In these pages, Millet proves herself to be a keen student of the mystics, enchanting us with discussions of language and its secrets while revealing new layers of meaning in some of the foundational texts of modern Western and Jewish literature.

Samuel Kessler, Assistant Professor of Religion, Gustavus Adolphus College, USA

Millet's Kabbalah and Literature is a bold and fascinating work. It embraces the idea of a secular kabbalah with both hands, carries the reader through four centuries of antinomian Jewish literature, and demonstrates how Lurianic and gnostic Judaism, unshackled from tradition but not from Jewishness, achieves a freedom to create, to innovate, and to sustain life within this world and on the written page. The book is lucid about devilishly complex matters. It is also exhilarating, powerful, and full of startling formulations that will haunt readers long after they have put it back on the shelf.

James Porter, Irving Stone Professor in Literature, University of California, Berkeley, USA

Neither a game nor a superstition, this book reveals kabbalah as a practice that dissolves and recomposes language, mimesis, and society in a supreme questioning of authority. With an astonishing flair for intellectual contact-tracing in a constantly shifting historical landscape, Kitty Millet opens to new scrutiny authors both canonical and little-known, as well as many ways of being Jewish.

Haun Saussy, Professor, Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago, USA