The book invites readers to a reexamination of Modern Hebrew literature and culture from complementary critical perspectives, through readings of texts from this corpus. Among the issues explored are the Eastern European Jewish and Central European Jewish versions of this literature and their battle for cultural hegemony; the narrative of rebirth, which requires a transitional, «pagan» developmental phase in which man and nation are united through «primitive texts»; the challenges of literary «occupied territory» and the «ghost language», Hebrew, with its religious «baggage»; and South America on the map of recent Israeli literature.