BooksOperation Shylock: A Confession
What if a lookalike stranger stole your name, usurped your biography and went around the world pretending to be you? In this tour de force of fact and fiction, Philip Roth meets a man who may or may not be Philip Roth. Because someone with that name has been touring the State of Israel, promoting a bizarre exodus in reverse of the Jews. Roth decides to stop him—even if that means impersonating his impersonator. Suspenseful, hilarious, hugely impassioned, pulsing with intelligence and narrative energy, Operation Shylock is at once a spy story, a political thriller, a meditation on identity, and a confession. Like Pushkin and Dostoevsky before him, Philip Roth takes on the subject of the writer’s double, which for Roth is inevitably bound up in Jewishness and identity. This is a bold, inventive and energetic departure from his past novels, a meta-novel, and, like all of his writing, full of ideas, wit, humor and startling observation.
What if a lookalike stranger stole your name, usurped your biography and went around the world pretending to be you? In this tour de force of fact and fiction, Philip Roth meets a man who may or may not be Philip Roth. Because someone with that name has been touring the State of Israel, promoting a bizarre exodus in reverse of the Jews. Roth decides to stop him—even if that means impersonating his impersonator. Suspenseful, hilarious, hugely impassioned, pulsing with intelligence and narrative energy, Operation Shylock is at once a spy story, a political thriller, a meditation on identity, and a confession. Like Pushkin and Dostoevsky before him, Philip Roth takes on the subject of the writer’s double, which for Roth is inevitably bound up in Jewishness and identity. This is a bold, inventive and energetic departure from his past novels, a meta-novel, and, like all of his writing, full of ideas, wit, humor and startling observation.
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Find Operation Shylock: A Confession Philip Roth in PDF, EPUB, ebook, audiobook, print, or library editions.
Find Operation Shylock: A Confession Philip Roth in PDF, EPUB, ebook, audiobook, print, or library editions.
9 books in catalog
Exploring American identity, Jewish middle-class life, personal ethics, and mortality, twentieth-century American fiction frequently drew on local setting and autobiography to interrogate culture. Philip Roth became one of the most widely read postwar American novelists through his incisive portrayals of personal turmoil, starting with his acclaimed debut collection Goodbye, Columbus and followed by his bestselling 1969 novel Portnoy's Complaint.
Born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1933 to first-generation Jewish immigrant parents, Roth was raised in a middle-class enclave and graduated from Weequahic High School in 1950. He earned a bachelor's degree in English from Bucknell University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, followed by a master's degree in English literature from the University of Chicago. While in Chicago, he met his first wife, Margaret Martinson, and began publishing short fiction and essays in periodicals such as the Chicago Review and The New Yorker. His debut collection, Goodbye, Columbus (1959), won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction and brought him immediate national attention.
Roth's fiction is known for its intensely autobiographical quality, sharp comic dialogue, and formal blurring between reality and fiction. Frequently setting his stories in his hometown of Newark, he examined Jewish-American identity, family duties, sexuality, aging, and the friction between traditional and contemporary morals. He frequently employed literary alter egos, such as Nathan Zuckerman, to explore the complexities of artistic creation and personal memory through a sensual, ingenious prose style.
9 books in catalog
Exploring American identity, Jewish middle-class life, personal ethics, and mortality, twentieth-century American fiction frequently drew on local setting and autobiography to interrogate culture. Philip Roth became one of the most widely read postwar American novelists through his incisive portrayals of personal turmoil, starting with his acclaimed debut collection Goodbye, Columbus and followed by his bestselling 1969 novel Portnoy's Complaint.
Born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1933 to first-generation Jewish immigrant parents, Roth was raised in a middle-class enclave and graduated from Weequahic High School in 1950. He earned a bachelor's degree in English from Bucknell University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, followed by a master's degree in English literature from the University of Chicago. While in Chicago, he met his first wife, Margaret Martinson, and began publishing short fiction and essays in periodicals such as the Chicago Review and The New Yorker. His debut collection, Goodbye, Columbus (1959), won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction and brought him immediate national attention.
Roth's fiction is known for its intensely autobiographical quality, sharp comic dialogue, and formal blurring between reality and fiction. Frequently setting his stories in his hometown of Newark, he examined Jewish-American identity, family duties, sexuality, aging, and the friction between traditional and contemporary morals. He frequently employed literary alter egos, such as Nathan Zuckerman, to explore the complexities of artistic creation and personal memory through a sensual, ingenious prose style.
