Between two worlds: the stories of Serge Liberman

Authors

  • Richard Freadman

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1344/co20192633-35

Keywords:

Australian Jewish short fiction, Post-Enlightenment rationality, Jewish mysticism, existentialism, redemption

Abstract

Serge Liberman, who died in December 2017, was an important and highly distinctive Australian ethnic writer. His short stories, including the posthumously published The Storyteller, conduct what is in effect a conversation between two worlds: that of post-Enlightenment rationality, on the one hand, and that of the magical, the folkloric, the Hassidic, imagination of the shtetl, on the other. Liberman’s profound tragic sense does not preclude the possibility of human redemption through empathy, compassion and imaginative inspiration.

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Published

2019-06-26