Stranger In My Own Country (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780374535537)

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 in postwar Germany.
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.

Author: Yascha Mounk
ISBN-10: 0374535531
ISBN-13: 9780374535537
Publisher: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux-3pl
Language: English
Published: 02/03/2015
Pages: 272
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.76lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.61d