The Shawl (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Cynthia Ozick
- First Published: 1989
- Type of Work: A story and a novella
- Time of Work: The early 1940’s and the late 1970’s
- Setting: A German concentration camp and Miami Beach, Florida
- Principal Characters: Rosa Lublin, Magda, Stella, Simon Persky
- Genres: Psychological fiction, Social realism, Short fiction
- Subjects: Mothers, Parents and children, Prisoners, Murder or homicide, Europe or Europeans, 1940’s, World War II, Guilt, 1980’s, Child abuse, Mental illness, Obsession, Jews or Jewish life, War, Florida, Nazism or Nazis, Germany or German people, Holocaust, Jewish, Poland or Polish people, Concentration camps, Joy or sorrow
- Locales: Germany, Miami, FL
Although it does not happen often (for short stories do not have the prestige or readership of novels), every once in a while an American short story appears that has such a powerful and immediate effect that it is destined to become a classic. Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” with its bestial crime and its methodical detective, is such a story from the early development of the short-story form; Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” with its inextricable mix of myth and reality and its shocking and unforgettable climax, is another from its more recent history....
[The entire page is 2524 words long]
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