Stranger in My Own CountryStranger in My Own Country
a Jewish Family in Modern Germany
Title rated 3.9 out of 5 stars, based on 15 ratings(15 ratings)
Book, 2014
Current format, Book, 2014, First edition, Available .Book, 2014
Current format, Book, 2014, First edition, Available . Offered in 0 more formats"A moving and unsettling exploration of a young man's formative years in a country still struggling with its past. As a Jew in postwar Germany, Yascha Mounk felt like a foreigner in his own country. When he mentioned that he is Jewish, some made anti-Semitic jokes or talked about the superiority of the Aryan race. Others, sincerely hoping to atone for the country's past, fawned over him with a forced friendliness he found just as alienating. Vivid and fascinating, Stranger in My Own Country traces the contours of Jewish life in a country still struggling with the legacy of the Third Reich and portrays those who, inevitably, continue to live in its shadow. Marshaling an extraordinary range of material into a lively narrative, Mounk surveys his countrymen's responses to "the Jewish question." Examining history, the story of his family, and his own childhood, he shows that anti-Semitism and far-right extremism have long coexisted with self-conscious philo-Semitism. But of late a new kind of resentment against Jews has come out in the open. Unnoticed by much of the outside world, the desire for a "finish line" that would spell a definitive end to the country's obsession with the past is feeding an emphasis on German victimhood. Mounk shows how, from the government's pursuit of a less "apologetic" foreign policy to the way the country's idea of the "Volk" makes life difficult for its immigrant communities, a troubled nationalism is shaping Germany's future"--
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- New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014., ©2014
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