Operation Shylock (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Philip Roth
- First Published: 1993
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: 1988-1993
- Setting: New York, London, Jerusalem, and Ramallah
- Principal Characters: Philip Roth, “Philip Roth”, Wanda Jane “Jinx” Possesski, Aharon Appelfeld, Lewis B. Smilesburger, George Ziad, John Demjanjuk, Apter, Claire Bloom
- Genres: Long fiction, Problem novel
- Subjects: Mistaken or secret identity, 1980’s, Novelists, Surgery or surgeons, Jews or Jewish life, Anti-Semitism, Espionage or spies, 1990’s, Holocaust, Jewish, Israel or Israelis, Comedy, Jews and Gentiles, Split personalities, Jerusalem, Jewish-Arab relations, Palestinian Arabs, Secularism, Zionism
- Locales: New York, London, England, Jerusalem, Ramallah, Jordan
Though Philip Roth subtitles his twentieth book A Confession, he cautions his reader, “For legal reasons, I have had to alter a number of facts in this book.” Yet Roth’s sly confession later concedes that its own deceit is a matter of more than revising a few litigible details: “Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. This confession is false.” Like the proverbial Cretan paradoxically contending that all Cretans are liars, Roth presents a plausible if bizarre story about a famous novelist named Philip Roth and...
[The entire page is 2161 words long]
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