Therese has married wealthy but arrogant Bernard Desqueyroux, and is now part of his oppressively traditionalist family. When Bernard's younger sister Anna falls madly in love with a handsome young Portuguese man, Therese is tasked by the family to persuade Anna to forego the planned nuptials. But as she witnesses Anna's determination to keep her lover by her side, Therese finds her own desire to free herself from the provincial conventions that threaten...

"From Matthew Arnold's time to our own, the experience of assimilating Jews and the idiom of "culture" have been fundamentally interwined with each other. This book studies the unexpected parallels and ironic reversals between a cultural dispensation that had ambivalent responses to Jews and Jews who became exponents of that very tradition." "Concluding with a look at the culture wars of our own times, this study suggests that they might best be read...