Negotiating the eruv.

Leslie Morris. The Translated Jew: German Jewish Culture outside the Margins. Northwestern UP, 2018. xii, 235 pp. $99.95 hardback, $34.95 paper, $34.95 ebook. The Translated Jew: German Jewish Culture outside the Margins considers a number of writers in German, English, and French, whether of German background or of European Jewish heritage, and configures them in an intricate pattern of which the explicatory model is, implicitly, the eruv, that shared space that on Shabbat is sacred to the observant Jew. Among the writers and artists considered by Morris are W.G. Sebald and H.G. Adler, Raymond Federman, Alfred Kazin, Daniel Blaufuks, Anne Blonstein, Paul Celan, Rose Ausländer, and Nelly Sachs. Among those not given consideration are Elias Canetti and Walter Abish, to whom the reviewer draws attention. The diversity of the selected figures sets up an intricate argument and, for the reader, a challenge whose negotiation offers many rewards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]