ABSTRACT
City of God is mainly concerned with metaphysical quest for meaning. It revolves around the possibility of reconciliation between Judeo-Christian ethics and twentieth-century brutality, incorporating also a discussion of the traditionally conflicting paradigms of contemporary physics and religion. City of God constitutes E. L. Doctorow’s first attempt to engage with the Holocaust in writing. City of God self-consciously reflects on limits of representation. The variety of voices, ontological levels and storylines displayed in City of God allow for understanding of the novel as highly polyphonic in Bakhtinian terms. By emphasizing the Holocaust’s roots in anti-Semitism and in the economic and social foundations of capitalism and imperialism, City of God joins in with those commentators of the Holocaust who have rejected an understanding of Nazi genocide as unintelligible or incomprehensible. City of God may thus be read as rejection of claims of uniqueness which have often been uttered by certain Holocaust scholars as well as secularist historians and rabbis.
