Food and identity: food writing and Jewish identity construction in Anita Brookner’s Holocaust novels

Food writing that runs through Anita Brookner’s three Holocaust novels resonates with the theme of Jewish national identity construction. This paper aims to examine the food images, culinary practices, and characters’ attitudes toward Jewish food in these novels through semiotics, and to explore the way Jewish immigrants deal with their dietary habits in different social contexts and food’s function in building Jewish nationality. The results show that the protagonists’ stances concerning Jewish food range from repulsion to adherence to transcendence, reflecting the psychological transformations of the Jewish immigrants confronted with the traumatic history of the Holocaust and their cultural adaptation thereafter. Through her meticulous portrayal of food, Brookner successfully transcends the narrative dilemma surrounding “writing poetry after the Holocaust,” creating an archive of collective memory for those who perished while expanding and deepening a narrative model within contemporary British literature. The findings can be applied in the exploring of Jewish identity construction in literature. The exploration of the correlation between food and identity construction in literature can unveil insights into human behavior patterns, cultural migration, and adaptation.