Metonymies of Jewish Postcoloniality: The British Mandate for Palestine and Israel in Contemporary British Jewish Fiction

Jewish and British histories were never more fatefully intertwined than during the

1930s and 40s, but the period of the British Mandate in Palestine receives relatively

little attention outside specialist circles and does not feature centrally in the many

debates about Empire, decolonisation and diaspora. This is not necessarily (just) a

result of non-Jewish amnesia, but also relates to the fact that for many British Jews

the anti-colonial struggle of the Zionists in Palestine were (and perhaps still are) as

acute an embarrassment as the contentious politics of the state of Israel. Since the

late 1980s, however, contemporary British Jewish writers have repeatedly made this

period and relationship the focus of their narratives. The article argues that British

Jewish fictions of the historical colonial encounter of the Jews with the British during

the Palestine Mandate bring about the convergence not only of English (or British)

and Jewish identification patterns, but also of English and Jewish constructions of the

past. The contribution discusses works by Linda Grant, Bernice Rubens and Jonathan

Wilson.