Meri-Jane Rochelson is professor emerita of English at Florida International University. She is the author of A Jew in the Public Arena: The Career of Israel Zangwill (Wayne State University Press, 2008), editor of Zangwill’s 1892 novel Children of the Ghetto (Wayne State University Press, 1998) and his 1908 play The Melting-Pot, and co-editor of Transforming Genres: New Approaches to British Fiction of the 1890s.Her latest book, Eli’s Story: A Twentieth-Century Jewish Life (Wayne State University Press) is first and foremost a biography. Its subject is Eli G. Rochelson, MD (1907–1984), author Meri-Jane Rochelson’s father. At its core is Eli’s story in his own words, taken from an interview he did with his son, Burt Rochelson, in the mid-1970s. The book tells the story of a man whose life and memory spanned two world wars, several migrations, an educational odyssey, the massive disruption of the Holocaust, and finally, a frustrating yet ultimately successful effort to restore his professional credentials and identity, as well as reestablish family life. Both scholars and general readers interested in Holocaust narratives will be moved by this monograph.
