This is the first book-length study of how three important European thinkers-Kierkegaard, Kafka and Blanchot-use the Binding of Isaac to illuminate the sacrificial situation of the literary writer. Danta shows that literature plays a vital and heretical role in these three writers' highly idiosyncratic accounts of the Akedah. His claim is twofold: firstly, that all three authors choose to respond to the Genesis narrative by manifesting literature; and, secondly, that each heretically endows literature-or fiction-with the power to suspend the sacrifice.Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac is...