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Allegra Goodman
(1967-)

Active: 1987- in USA, North America

By Ranen Omer-Sherman (University of Miami)

Indexing Data:

  • Active In: USA, North America
  • Born In: USA, North America
  • Activity: Novelist, Short Story Writer

Life, Works and Times

Reader Actions

Allegra Goodman has been rightly hailed as one of her generation’s most astute observers of Jewish mores and her richly satirical chronicles of the varieties of Jewish family life and society have often been compared to the acerbic social commentary of the great Victorian novelists. Without writing directly about the Holocaust, the alienation, religious conflicts, and displacements at the heart of her characters’ fictional universes are often indelibly shadowed by its pervasiveness. Goodman’s third book and first novel, Kaaterskill Falls, a 1998 National Book Award Finalist, offers rich psychological portraits of how both individuals and community endure displacements and losses due to Holocaust trauma, even when fa

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First published 28 April 2004

Citation: Omer-Sherman, Ranen. "Allegra Goodman". The Literary Encyclopedia. 28 April 2004.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5707, accessed 9 February 2010.]