"The Holocaust is an event that refuses to stay in the past. By its nature it both defies and cries out for representation and interpretation; yet representation is at the same time necessarily reductive of the reality to which it refers. Yet however inadequate, representation, of one sort or another, is the only means we have to transmit and appropriate past human experience.".

"The essays in this volume take as their starting point the strivings of imaginative writing to surmount this problem and the search for ways to connect past experience to the present and future: if we do not learn the lessons of history we risk repeating its tragic mistakes. The book leaves us with the message that literature might have a unique role to play in this respect."--BOOK JACKET.