Robert Cohen for the Guardian:

“This was how a number of Jewish-American writers of my own generation started out. We’d read enough of our forebears to see that we were coming in late, and would be only back-row singers in the diaspora chorus, fashioning our cunning little fugues of internal exile, turning Kafka’s lament – “What have I in common with the Jews? I have nothing in common even with myself” – into our own (anti-)national anthem.”