Worldliness, Jewish Purpose, and the Non-Jewish Jewish Narrator in Olga Grjasnowa’s Der verlorene Sohn (2020)

Abstract

The worldliness that characterizes the literary fiction of the self-identified Jewish writer Olga Grjasnowa can be understood as an expression of “Jewish purpose” (Adam Sutcliffe), entailing solidarity with other persecuted minorities rooted in the Jewish experience, and especially Jewish suffering. This article focuses on Grjasnowa’s Der verlorene Sohn, in which a Muslim child is taken from his family and brought to St. Petersburg. The article explores the depiction of Islamophobia in Imperial Russia and how seemingly extraneous allusions to anti-Semitism in fact underpin a broader critique of the Enlightenment’s unfulfilled promise. Subsequently, it is argued that the narrator can be construed as a “non-Jewish Jew” (Isaac Deutscher), with a Jewish identity that is expressed through social and ethical commitment rather than belief. Finally, the article explores tensions inherent in Jewish purpose—including the perennial worry that Jews may be required to elide their particularity for the sake of universal values.