Operation Shylock (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Philip Roth
- First Published: 1993
- Type of Work: Novel
- 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
Over his English wife's objections, Philip Roth goes to Israel in 1988 ostensibly to interview his friend Israeli novelist Aharon Appelfeld and to attend the trial of John Demjanjuk, the man accused of being one of the sadistic guards at Treblinka, a Nazi death camp during World War II. Roth interviews Appelfeld and attends the trial, but he is even more interested in a man who is posing as him, calling himself Philip Roth. He not only looks like Roth but also dresses exactly like him. He goes around arguing for a reverse diaspora—that is, for all the Ashkenazi Jews in Israel to...
[The entire page is 768 words long]
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