Judah Waten is best known for his short stories and novels of migrant life in twentieth-century Australia. He is generally seen as the first Australian writer to have written "from the inside" about non-English-speaking migrants and immigrant communities, and thus he is an important figure in the history of migrant or multicultural literatures in Australia. More specifically, he is a significant figure in the history of Australian Jewish writing. The collection of interrelated short stories Alien Son (1952), Waten's first book, which is concerned with the early experiences in Australia of a Russian Jewish immigrant family, remained in print continuously between 1952 and 1993. It has often been referred to as an "Australian classic." As a critic and commentator, Waten also wrote some of the earliest essays on migrant literature in Australia.

Waten's other claim to interest for literary historians is as a communist novelist and critic. As such, his writings...