Allegra Goodman

Ranen Omer-Sherman (University of Louisville)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

Born 1 Jan 1967
Activity 1987-ongoing

Places

Born in United States
Active in United States

Activities

Primary

Novelist
Story-writer

Resources

Goodman's Works

Save to Bookshelf

Allegra Goodman has been rightly hailed as one of her generation’s most astute observers of Jewish mores and her richly satirical chronicles of the varieties of Jewish family life and society have often been compared to the acerbic social commentary of the great Victorian novelists. Without writing directly about the Holocaust, the alienation, religious conflicts, and displacements at the heart of her characters’ fictional universes are often indelibly shadowed by its pervasiveness. Goodman’s third book and first novel,

Kaaterskill Falls

, a 1998 National Book Award Finalist, offers rich psychological portraits of how both individuals and community endure displacements and losses due to Holocaust trauma, even when far removed from the atrocity. Goodman’s two short story collections…

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494 words

Citation: Omer-Sherman, Ranen. "Allegra Goodman". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 28 April 2004 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5707, accessed 21 November 2024.]