Review of Since 1948. Israeli Literature in the Making, By Nancy E. Berg and Naomi B. Sokoloff eds.

In 2018, Nancy E. Berg and Naomi B. Sokoloff1 convened the symposium “Enshrining the Book: Israeli Literature at 70” at Washington University in St. Louis. The conference represented an opportunity for scholars to reassess “the literary history and trajectories of Israeli culture since the founding of the state in 1948.”2 It is precisely out of this conference that the volume Since 1948. Israeli Literature in the Making, edited by Berg and Sokoloff, arose. Indeed, the cover image—showing the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem under construction in 1964–65—evokes not only the conference title but also, most significantly, the whole idea of the national literary canon as a “process” rather than a “product” (p. 3) and of Israeli literature as “still very much under construction” (p. 4).