Abstract
Pozorski focuses in this chapter upon bestselling historical fiction that draws upon archival research. She develops a reading of the Holocaust archive in relation to two recent American bestsellers about World War II: Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See (2014) and Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale (2015), novels grounded in historical research. What does it mean for authors from the Midwest and the West Coast, respectively, to pursue the Holocaust as the topic of their fiction? Through close readings of the novels’ achronological representations of time and the figure of a vulnerable child, Pozorski argues that these bestsellers reflect a cultural trauma we have yet to confront – trauma that grows out of both willful ignorance during the early parts of the Nazi genocide and a failure adequately to help refugees upon the war’s end.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Bibliography
Aarons, Victoria, ed. 2016. Third-Generation Holocaust Narratives: Memory in Memoir and Fiction. Lanham: Lexington Books.
Alexander, Jeffrey C. 2012. Trauma: A Social Theory. New York: Polity.
Alter, Alexandra. 2014. “Literary Jackpot, Against the Odds.” New York Times, December 26, 2014. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/27/books/anthonys-doerrs-all-the-light-we-cannot-see-hits-it-big.html.
Caruth, Cathy. 2013. Literature in the Ashes of History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Derrida, Jacques. 1995. Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression. Translated by Eric Prenowitz. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Doerr, Anthony. 2014. All the Light We Cannot See. New York: Scribner.
Doerr, Anthony. n.d. “All the Light We Cannot See.” Author website. http://anthonydoerr.com/books/all-the-light-we-cannot-see/.
Eshel, Amir. 2013. Futurity: Contemporary Literature and the Quest for the Past. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Goodhart, Sandor. 2015. “The Blind Girl and the White-haired Boy: Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See and the Limits of Holocaust Fiction.” Unpublished Essay, Purdue University.
Hannah, Kristin. 2015. The Nightingale. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Lambert, Josh. 2011. “Archive Fever.” Tablet, May 31, 2011. https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/68568/archive-fever.
Maslin, Janet. 2014. “Light Found in Darkness of Wartime.” New York Times, April 28, 2014. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/29/books/all-the-light-we-cannot-see-by-anthony-doerr.html.
Ramazani, Jahan. 1994. Poetry of Mourning: The Modern Elegy from Hardy to Heaney. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Roy, Arundhati. 1997. The God of Small Things. New Delhi: Penguin.
Strawser, Jessica. 2017. “New Territory: The Nightingale Author Kristin Hannah Discusses her New Alaska-Set Novel.” Writer’s Digest, December 21, 2017. https://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/there-are-no-rules/interviews/new-territory-the-nightingale-author-kristin-hannah-discusses-her-new-alaska-set-novel.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Pozorski, A. (2020). Archive Future: Trauma and the Child in Two Contemporary American Bestsellers. In: Maxey, R. (eds) 21st Century US Historical Fiction. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41897-7_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41897-7_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-41896-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-41897-7
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)