Operation Shylock: A Confession - Softcover

Philip Roth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 009930791X ISBN 13: 9780099307914

Publisher: Vintage Books, 1994

Synopsis

What if a look-alike stranger stole your name, usurped your biography, and went about the world pretending to be you? In his extraordinary new book, his most ingenious and original work since "The Counterlife", Phillip Roth confronts his double, an imposter whose self-appointed task is to lead the jews out of Israel and back to Europe, a moses in reverse and a monstrous nemesis to the 'real' Philip Roth. 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.

About this title

Review

Philip Roth's very literary novels, most famously Portnoy's Complaint, have always had the feel of confessional autobiography. Operation Shylock boasts not only a character named Philip Roth, a Jewish-American novelist, but an impostor who is claiming to be him. Roth's impostor causes a furor in Israel by advocating "Diasporism," the polar opposite of Zionism, encouraging Israelis to return home to eastern Europe. In Israel the real Roth attends the trial of a former Nazi, and also observes at a West Bank military court dealing harshly with young Palestinians. Through stark counterpoint between distorted doubles, along with his trademark bawdy humor, Roth comically explores the tensions of his identity as a writer, as a Jew, and as a human being. Operation Shylock won the PEN/Faulkner Award for 1994.

From the Inside Flap

"Time Magazine Best American Novel (1993)
In this fiendishly imaginative book (which may or may not be fiction), Philip Roth meets a man who may or may not be Philip Roth. Because "someone with that name has been touring Israel, promoting a bizarre reverse exodus of the Jews. Roth is intent on stopping him, even if that means impersonating his own impersonator.
With excruciating suspense, unfettered philosophical speculation, and a cast of characters that includes Israeli intelligence agents, Palestinian exiles, an accused war criminal, and an enticing charter member of an organization called Anti-Semites Anonymous, Operation Shylock barrels across the frontier between fact and fiction, seriousness and high comedy, history and nightmare.

Edition details

• Publisher: Vintage Books
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 009930791X
• ISBN 13: 9780099307914
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 398