Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Potok, Chaim (Vol. 112) - Washington Post Book World (review date 3 December 1978)

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Washington Post Book World (review date 3 December 1978)

SOURCE: "Diaspora," in Washington Post Book World, December 3, 1978, p. E5.

[In the following review, the critic finds shortcomings in Wanderings but marks the presence of "occasionally brilliant" passages.]

Babylonian chroniclers wrote, in two columns, the histories of Assyria and Babylonia side by side; during their captivity in Babylonia, Jewish scribes adopted the practice as they synchronized the histories of Judah and Israel. In a way, Chaim Potok now has done the same thing, matching the reigns of Abraham and Saul and David to the advancing civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, and tracing the movements of the Hebrew peoples eventually through the development of Islam and Christianity. It is an intriguing concept, and one which lends a more solid basis to the ambiguous history related in the Bible. Unfortunately, Potok, who has formerly stuck to...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Granville Hicks (review date 29 April 1967)
   2. Edmund Fuller (review date 15 May 1967)
   3. Sandra Schmidt (review date 20 July 1967)
   4. Times Literary Supplement (review date 31 August 1967)
   5. Richard Freedman (review date 14 September 1969)
   6. Dorothy Rabinowitz (review date May 1970)
   7. Washington Post Book World (review date 3 December 1978)
   8. J. D. Reed (review date 19 October 1981)
   9. John H. Timmerman (essay date 16 May 1984)
   10. Time (review date 25 March 1985)
   11. Paul Cowan (review date 31 March 1985)
   12. Cynthia Grenier (review date 29 April 1985)
   13. Susan Reed (review date 6 May 1985)
   14. Edward A. Abramson (essay date 1986)
   15. S. Lillian Kremer (essay date 1989)
   16. Andy Solomon (review date 6 May 1990)
   17. Nikki Stiller (review date 13 May 1990)
   18. Brian Morton (review date 2 November 1990)
   19. Irving Abrahamson (review date 17 May 1992)
   20. Bryan Cheyette (review date 27 November 1992)
   21. Felicity Barringer (review date 1 December 1996)
   22. David M. Shribman (review date 12 December 1996)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright