Stranger in a Strange Land

Searching for Gershom Scholem and Jerusalem

George Prochnik

$29.99

Paperback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

Availability Information

We source books from suppliers in Australia and overseas. For books we don't currently have in stock, the time it takes to get them from our suppliers can vary widely - from a few days to a few months - so we check each book with each supplier to determine the expected time it will take to be supplied to us.

We then advise you accordingly. If the time taken to get any book is too long for you, you can let us know and we will cancel or adjust your order, and refund as required.

To find out the anticipated arrival time for specific items prior to ordering, please contact us by phone or email:

Phone +61 2 9264 3111, or 1800 4 BOOKS (1800 4 26657) if outside Sydney:
option 1 Abbey's Bookshop (Crime, History, Science, Kids & more) • info@abbeys.com.au
option 2 Language Book Centre (ESL & Foreign Languages) • language@abbeys.com.au
option 3 Galaxy Bookshop (Sci-fi, Fantasy, Romance, Graphic Novels) • sf@galaxybooks.com.au

QTY:

English

Granta Books
29 August 2018

Biography: religious & spiritual; Non-Western philosophy; Judaism: mysticism

Gershom Scholem, the great humanist thinker and founder of modern Kabbalah, is all but forgotten today. But here, in a biography as daring and inquisitive as its subject, George Prochnik goes in search of Scholem, restoring the reputation of a vital intellectual and finding in his work a vision with the power to reinvigorate contemporary religious and political thought.

Tracing Scholem's life from his upbringing in Berlin, where he experienced a close and transformative friendship with Walter Benjamin, Prochnik reveals how Scholem's frustration with the bourgeois ideology of Germany during WWI led him to discover mystic Judaism, Kabbalah, and, finally, Zionism. But having emigrated to what was to become Israel, Scholem again found himself a 'stranger in a strange land', ill at ease with a prevailing conservative form of Zionism.

Prochnik follows Scholem to the modern Holy Land - only to find that he too is disillusioned by the state politics he encounters. But through his profound study of Scholem and his own experience of Jerusalem, Prochnik not only questions the ideological and religious constructs of Jerusalem, but finds an ethical way forward, showing how a new form of pluralism might energize Jewish thought.

By: George Prochnik
Imprint: Granta Books
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 198mm, Width: 129mm, Spine: 31mm
Weight: 435g
ISBN: 9781783781805
ISBN 10: 1783781807
Pages: 528
Publication Date: 29 August 2018
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

George Prochnik's essays, poetry, and fiction have appeared in numerous journals. He has taught English and American literature at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, is editor-at-large for Cabinet magazine, and is the author of The Impossible Exile: Stefan Zweig at the End of the World (2014), In Pursuit of Silence: Listening for Meaning in a World of Noise (2010), and Putnam Camp: Sigmund Freud, James Jackson Putnam, and the Purpose of American Psychology (2006). He lives in New York City.