{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.025415198792148968, 'fraction_numerical': 0.00754906894816306, 'mean_word_length': 5.031866464339909, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
An Introduction to Twentieth-Century Czech Fiction: Comedies of Defiance. By Robert Porter. Portland, Ore.: Sussex Academic Press, 2001. ix, 209 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Chronology. Index. $29.95, paper.

In both volumes Rozenblit emphasizes the broader insights into the nature of modern identity, Jewish and non-Jewish, to be gained by a study of the Austrian example, where middle-class Jews felt, almost uniquely in Europe, free to be as Jewish as they desired. In contrast, Jewish citizens in Germany and France had long felt powerful pressures to identify themselves as members of the German or French nations, emphasizing merely their different religious beliefs from the non-Jewish majorities. As a multinational state, the Austrian half of the Austro-Hungarian empire did not have a single "official" national identity. To be sure, things German, especially the German language, had a de facto position of prominence; German high culture and language were widely adopted, and sincerely cherished, by the Jewish bourgeoisie in Vienna and the western part of the Austrian half of the empire, but most Austrian Jews did not claim to be part of the German people in Austria (who did not, at any rate, constitute a majority of the population). Rozenblit provides a detailed and fascinating account of how Jewish identities, often ineffably subtle in their nuances, were battered yet bolstered by the shocks of war—until the collapse of the empire loomed. At war's end the Jews in the Austrian rump state faced a particularly awkward situation, since this new nation-state now encompassed an unusually homogeneous German area; what then was to be the status of Jews who had clearly stated that they were not part of the German people? Jews in almost all areas of the former empire faced situations that, given the often wounded and xenophobic nationalism of the successor states, ranged from awkward to deeply alarming. By their very nature, the complexities explored by Rozenblit far exceed what can be critically evaluated in a short review, nor is it feasible to bring up debatable minor points. If criticism is to be expressed of this slim volume (170 pages of text), it lies, especially given its claims to wide relevance and readership, in how insufficiently these complexities are illuminated by ambitious comparisons to other areas of Europe and America. Similarly, the book could have been much improved by a more ample and imaginative exploration of the long-range historical background to the evolution of modern Jewish consciousness. Rozenblit's introduction presents a brief, mostly descriptive, overview of theories of ethnicity, and there is no conclusion whatsoever, only a nine-page epilogue. This offers a few paragraphs of interesting material about developments after 1919, but much of it consists of yet another recitation of themes already too often repeated in nearly every chapter. With minor exceptions, Rozenblit writes well (her taste for unnecessary, sometimes overheated adjectives can begin to grate); she generally makes sober judgments and stays close to her sources (perhaps too close); and undoubtedly she has done much research. But economies of style, especially editing to reduce the repetition and the tendency to linger over obvious points, could easily have trimmed many pages and resulted in an even slimmer book—a point that suggests a related difficulty: Although die book does offer revealing and useful information about various Jewish populations in Austria, in other regards, the book seems too modest. There is considerable overlap with the previous volume, and the year 1919 does not finally seem a particularly productive stopping point in exploring shifts in Jewish identity, since so much remained highly uncertain at that point. An indepth exploration of the experiences of Jews in the successor states of the 1920s and 1930s seems to beg for attachment to this story to give it a more satisfactory sense of wholeness.