Like most writers, the idea of not writing fills me with more anxiety than the act of writing itself. Storytelling is so hardwired in me – as a tool of expression, learning and mental okayness – without it, I wouldn’t know how to get along in this life.

But is every story worth telling? What are the ethical boundaries that decide who can tell which stories and why? What are our responsibilities as writers to those we write about? And if literature – of all genres – is inherently political, what are our broader social responsibilities as writers?

These are the questions I’ve been exploring lately in my university research, which focuses specifically on Holocaust stories and the way Jewish people and history are represented in historical fiction. It’s heavy-going stuff, as I’m sure you can imagine.

Reading novel after novel depicting vicious and unimaginable cruelty is sobering to say the least. Contemplating the idea that, depending on the weather, the Nazis might have decided my own trace of Jewish blood was enough to condemn me, has been cumulatively shocking. Confronting the fact that anti-Semitism is becoming increasingly vocal and visible is chilling, and makes this work feel urgent.

I’ve cried a lot, overwhelmed, ill-equipped, standing at the foot of the mountain called anti-Semitism. Arguably, it’s the oldest from of bigotry in the book, and a study in conspiracy theorising. As humans, we’ve had thousands of years to work this one out but, like a deadly weed, it keeps coming back. The lies told about Jews shift around a bit, but the basic hatred has remained constant, and it’s always violent. Some of the libelling against Jews is so ingrained – and I won’t repeat the slurs here – it can even seem like cultural truth.

It’s forced me to ask: what am I doing to write against anti-Semitism myself? Superficially, it’s easy for me to answer that I have always tried to write interesting, non-tropey Jewish characters in my fiction; it’s easy for me to say, too, that I could never write a story that exploits the Holocaust – setting it in a concentration camp or ghetto – and call that an ethical decision. But is it? Or am I a coward, shying away from this worst crime against Jews?

What I have been discovering is that even the most cliched Holocaust romance can have some important ethical value, particularly where the author is making a clear stand against hatred, and is trying to honour the murdered and traumatised, however clumsy that attempt might be. At the same time, a few more highly regarded novels I’ve encountered, in their voyeuristic and inexplicable lingering in horror, seem far more problematic.

Most of my research has entailed wading neck-deep into all the scholarly debate over whether it’s ethical to write about the Holocaust at all. And it’s thrown a stark light on something I’ve known for a while: this is a conversation we’re not really having in publishing. The popularity of Holocaust novels seems to far outweigh any potential damage that might be done to our understanding of the Holocaust through its commercialisation, and to any inadvertent harm done to Jewish people in the process.

All of this seems to be urging me to more deeply engage with anti-Semitism and my own Jewish heritage in my writing. And I will be taking up precisely this challenge over the next few years, in my research and the fiction that will emerge from it. I’m determined to try to use my own voice, however small, to speak against this hatred however I can.

But in the meantime – and all the time – I’d appreciate hearing from any readers who have thoughts or questions about ethics in fiction generally, especially if you’ve been troubled by particular problems in this respect. I’d appreciate hearing any critical comment you might have about the ethics in my own work to date too. And I’d love to hear how you think we might all raise the bar of ethical responsibility higher.

All the good things to everyone,

Kim x

Photo by Eli Francis on Unsplash