This book reads the Joseph novella alongside contemporary trauma novels in order to analyze the loss of the assumptive world of the writer and readers of the Joseph novella. In turn, it re-thinks trauma theory in light of the “religious,” understood as the belief in and relationship to a God who orders the universe. Thus, this book argues that when we read the Joseph novella alongside contemporary trauma novels, we see a story written by people trying to reconstruct their assumptive world after the shattering of their old one, highlighting the significance of the religious dimension in trauma theory.