The literary allure of marginal Jewish characters

Jewish characters often appear in contemporary novels – and even in memoirs –  by non-Jewish writers. Dr Isabelle Hesse, a senior lecturer in the discipline of English and Writing at the University of Sydney, is fascinated by them. In a recent lecture delivered at the Sydney Jewish Museum, Hesse discussed how Indian and British-Caribbean authors explore ideas of Jewishness in their work – and what readers can gain from such exploration.

Hesse, who is not Jewish, was born and grew up in Luxembourg, where the history of the Holocaust is “very prominent”. She recalls that as early as when she was in Year 5 or 6, a Holocaust survivor came to her classroom to tell their story. From a young age, Hesse became interested in the Holocaust and was drawn to reading novels about it.

After finishing school, Hesse studied English, American, and post-colonial literature at university. She began reading novels written by authors across the world, and was captivated by books that brought together histories of the Holocaust and other histories, such as the partition of India.

Over time, Hesse became curious as to why authors from countries where Holocaust history is lesser-known – such as India, the British Caribbean and the African continent – chose to include Holocaust history in their writing, together with other histories they were more familiar with.

So it’s perhaps unsurprising that Hesse’s recent lecture focused on three books, each of which, she says, opened up the Holocaust and Jewish experience of World War Two to global audiences. At the same time, each book is a catalyst for readers to consider how different histories can be connected to each other, or what can be learned from comparing different experiences of being excluded and persecuted.

“I am interested in why and how Indian and British-Caribbean writers use Jewishness as a symbol, how they depict Jewish characters in their novels, and why they use experiences linked with Jewish histories to think through Indian and black histories,” she said in her lecture.

However, Hesse was keen to point out that different histories of suffering cannot be easily compared and are certainly not the same.

In her lecture, Hesse discussed two works of fiction: Anita Desai’s Baumgartner’s Bombay (1988) and Caryl Phillips’s The Nature of Blood (1997), and one non-fiction work: Vikram Seth’s memoir Two Lives (2005).

Seth’s Two Lives tells the story of Seth’s Indian great-uncle Shanti, and Shanti’s German-Jewish wife, Henny. By moving to Germany during the 1930s, Shanti witnessed discrimination against Jews and the increasing exclusion of the Jewish community from public life.

But Two Lives, explained Hesse, also addresses Shanti’s experience of being a foreigner in Germany, and discusses his experience of racism by the British. In doing so, the book brings together Jewish memories with Indian memories.

Seth learned very little about the Holocaust during his schooling in India. But in Two Lives, he uses Henny’s story as way to engage with the Holocaust and World War Two. The combination of Shanti’s and Henny’s experiences of marginalisation, said Hesse, draw the reader’s attention to the connection between the Holocaust and other events of the 20^th century.

That is, by using the experience of being an Indian person in Germany and in Britain as a contrast to the Jewish experience, Seth encourages readers to consider the impact of the war beyond Europe, especially the postwar rise of decolonisation movements in South Asia and Africa.

Hesse also discussed the work of another Indian author, Anita Desai, who was born in 1937 to a German mother and Indian father. Desai’s novel, Baumgartner’s Bombay, moves between the day of Hugo Baumgartner’s death, and flashbacks to his youth in Germany and arrival in colonial India.

Baumgartner is a German Jew who escapes Germany before the Holocaust. In India, he witnesses the violence that occurs as a result of partition. In doing so, Desai draws parallels between Baumgartner’s marginalisation in Germany and the persecution of Muslims during partition. By placing Baumgartner – a European – inside the riots, Desai uses his character to allow European and North American readers to understand the suffering of the Muslim minority.

This novel, said Hesse, presents the Holocaust as part of a history of persecution which originated in racism and colonialism. Yet the book also illustrates that the processes of discrimination and exclusion implemented during the Holocaust continued in different forms – and to different peoples – after the war.

Similar to Desai, in The Nature of the Blood, Caryl Phillips connects racism and Nazism as exclusionary ideologies and traces their legacies, said Hesse.

Phillips grew up in Leeds in the 1960s and ’70s, at a time when racism and the legacies of the British Empire were more likely to be broached in inflammatory speeches than taught in school classrooms. Hesse said the experience of Jewish people as a minority group appealed to Phillips, because it allowed him to better understand his own experience of difference and marginalisation.

The main narrative voices in The Nature of Blood are Jewish, and Phillips’ novel offers an interconnected history of minority identities – including how ideas of exclusion and marginalisation are extended into Israel.

For example, one character, Stephan, leaves Germany before the outbreak of World War Two to help build the new Jewish homeland in Palestine. Stephan, however, feels unable to integrate into the new Jewish society. He finds a companion in Malka, an Ethiopian Jew, who is equally disillusioned with the so-called Promised Land, as she and her family are treated as second-class citizens in Israel.

Placing Malka at the intersection of different forms of exclusion, said Hesse, allows Phillips to connect seemingly dissimilar minorities, and to conclude that the processes of discrimination continue, albeit in altered forms, in the modern world.

“What each of these books do,” says Hesse, “is give the reader a sense that there have been so many levels of exclusion that different peoples have experienced, and really get the reader to think about them and ask themselves what the similarities are, while being clear that the situations are different.”

Hesse hopes her lecture piqued audience members’ curiosity enough to go and read one of the books themselves, or to become more interested in thinking comparatively about Jewish history and other histories, while being careful not to make easy comparisons.

Given that the human brain is wired for story, reading books – both novels and memoirs – is perhaps one of the best ways for people to consider communities and histories they haven’t thought about before, as well as the connections between different types of “othering” and racism around the world.

Isabelle Hesse is the author of Reimagining Israel and Palestine in Contemporary British and German Cultures (Edinburgh University Press, 2024) and The Politics of Jewishness in Contemporary World Literature (Bloomsbury, 2016).