Seventeen contemporary academics and critics look at the Holocaust and its literary aftermath. This series of responses was commissioned specially for publication by Professor Gitay and Jewish Scholars Press and includes studies of Paul Celan, Doris Lessing, Peter Weiss, Primo Levi, Giorgio Bassani, Anne Frank, Jacov Lind, Jurek Becker and others. An especially interesting study involves German youth literature (Jugendliteratur) both before and after World War II.

The overall theme of this collection is the attempt of writers (and writer/victims) to come to terms with the sheer ontological horror of annihilation and abandonment while attempting acts of creation and understanding in the shadow of mass murder.