The Grammar of Displacement: Entwined Stories in Ruth Almog and Jenny Erpenbeck

Since 1945, the memory of the Holocaust and the Second World War has played a major role in Hebrew and German literature. This article suggests a comparative reading of prose works by Ruth Almog and Jenny Erpenbeck that deal with these memories, in light of the challenges identified by scholars of modern Hebrew and German literature. What literary devices do these writers use to respond to the catastrophe of the twentieth century? In what way do their stories intersect? To what extent do they reflect German-Hebrew dialogue? I argue that by combining historical details and fiction within a literary texture based on contiguity, variation, and intertextual relations, both writers call into question the binary of perpetrator versus victim and calamity versus redemption. I show how their grammar of displacement in Hebrew and in German helps account for the literary workings of memory and ethical justice.