BUKIET, MELVIN JULES

BUKIET, MELVIN JULES (1953– ), U.S. writer. Born to a father who was a Holocaust survivor and his American-born wife, Bukiet has devoted much of his fiction to the world of the Holocaust. In Stories of an Imaginary Childhood (1992), which deals with a young boy growing up in pre-Holocaust Poland, Bukiet creates the dimming world – as did aharon appelfeld and I.J. Singer – of those whose ends we already know, but whose actions are now understood with pathos and terror. His concern with the legacy of the Holocaust includes the collection While the Messiah Tarries, (1995), the novel After (1996) and his edition of Nothing Makes You Free: Writings by Descendants of Jewish Holocaust Survivors (2002). He is at ease in enfolding myth – both Jewish and Christian – into his works, as Signs and Wonders (1999) testifies. His writings also concern Israel, as with the darkly comedic Strange Fire (2001) and his sobering thoughts about the peace process in the Middle East, "Hope Against Hope" (New York Times, June 11, 2001). He taught at Sarah Lawrence College and was fiction editor of Tikkun. (Lewis Fried (2nd ed.)