Jewish Fantasy Worldwide: Trends in Speculative Stories from Australia to Chile reaches beyond American fiction to reveal a spectrum of Jewish fantasy: Post-Holocaust Soviet tales; Yiddish science fiction from the 1980s; Mizrahi novels from Iran, Iraq, and Turkey; and new themes and subgenres from Brazil to Morocco. This essay collection explores Jewish speculative fiction from every continent.

Jewish Fantasy Worldwide: Trends in Speculative Stories from Australia to Chile reaches beyond American fiction to reveal a spectrum of Jewish imagination. The chapters in this collection cover speculative works by Jewish artists and about Jewish characters from a broad range of national contexts, including post-Holocaust Europe, the Soviet Union, Israel, South America, French Canada, and the Middle East. The contributors consider various media including novels, short stories, film, YouTube videos, and fanfiction. Essays explore topics ranging from the ancient Jewish kingdom of Khazaria to modern university classes and the revival of Yiddish to the breadth of LGBTQ+ representation. For scholars and fans alike, this collection of essays will provide new perspectives on Jewish presences in speculative fiction around the world.

Chapter 1. Jewish Speculative Fiction in Australia and New Zealand

Gillian Polack and Bettina Burger

Chapter 2. The Wandering Messiah in Alejandro Jodorowsky's Imaginary Universes

Henri-Simon Blanc-Hoang

Chapter 3. When Jews Ruled the Volga: Exploring the Novels of the Khazars

Steven B. Frankel

Chapter 4. Kabbalist Rap: A Love Song for the Torah in Victoria Hanna’s Music Video אורייתא

Katharina Hadassah Wendl

Chapter 5. Djinn, Hauntings, and Double Consciousness: An Exploration of Mizrahi Magical Realism

Valerie Estelle Frankel

Chapter 6. Alternate History and Jewish Anxiety in Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America

Ilana Goldstein

Chapter 7. Leybl Botwinik’s Di Geheyme Shlikhes: A Groundbreaking Yiddish Science-Fiction Novel

Stephen M. Cohen

Chapter 8. Ancient Jewish Elements in 21st Century Alfredian Fanfiction

Martine Mussies

Chapter 9. Free Will, Kabbalah, Human Nature, and Messiah: Chaim Cigan’s Time Cruise via Parallel Histories and Identities

Michaela Weiss

Chapter 10. Contra Torrentem: Leo Perutz’s By Night Under the Stone Bridge and Central European Fantasy

Cameron Barrows

Chapter 11. Motifs of Secrecy, the Hidden and the Unspoken in the Novels of Isaac Asimov and Stanislaw Lem

Julie A. Hawkins

Chapter 12. Soviet Science Fiction of the 1960s and Jewishness: The Cases of Ilya Varshavsky and Gennady Gor

Marat Grinberg

Chaper 13. Seeking a Promised Land: Estrangement and Belonging in Queer Jewish Speculative Fiction

Akiva Hoffman

Chapter 14. Why are Science Fiction Anthologies Ashkanormative?

Mara W. Cohen Ioannides and Valerie Estelle Frankel

Chapter 15. Writing the Jewish Heroine’s Journey

Evonne Marzouk and Patti McCarthy

Chapter 16. Teaching Jewish Speculative Fiction

Judy Klass