Gegenleben

Philip Roth

ISBN 10: 0099481359 / ISBN 13: 9780099481355

Published by Random House UK Ltd Okt 2005, 2005

About this Item

Neuware - Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for FictionThe Counterlife is about people living their dreams of renewal and escape, some of them going so far as to risk their lives to alter their destinies. Wherever they find themselves, the characters of The Counterlife are tempted by the prospect of an alternative existence. Illuminating these lives in free-fall and transformation is the acrobat mind of novelist Nathan Zuckerman. His is the sceptical, enveloping intelligence that calculates the price that's paid in the struggle to change personal fortune and reshape history, whether in a dentist's office in suburban New Jersey; a tradition-bound English Village in Gloucestershire; a church in London's West End; or in a tiny desert settlement in Israel's occupied West Bank. Shot through with head-turning dualities, as daring as it is moving, The Counterlife reinvents the novel with style, wit and grace.

Seller Inventory # 9780099481355

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Gegenleben
• Publisher: Random House UK Ltd Okt 2005
• Publication Date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0099481359
• ISBN 13: 9780099481355
• Binding: Taschenbuch
• Condition: Neu
• Dimensions: 198W x 128H x 25D millimeters 198 millimeters width by 128 millimeters height by 25 millimeters depth
• Weight: 241 grams

About this title

Synopsis

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction

The Counterlife is about people living their dreams of renewal and escape, some of them going so far as to risk their lives to alter their destinies. Wherever they find themselves, the characters of The Counterlife are tempted by the prospect of an alternative existence.

Illuminating these lives in free-fall and transformation is the acrobat mind of novelist Nathan Zuckerman. His is the sceptical, enveloping intelligence that calculates the price that''s paid in the struggle to change personal fortune and reshape history, whether in a dentist''s office in suburban New Jersey; a tradition-bound English Village in Gloucestershire; a church in London''s West End; or in a tiny desert settlement in Israel''s occupied West Bank. Shot through with head-turning dualities, as daring as it is moving, The Counterlife reinvents the novel with style, wit and grace.

Review

The saga of Henry and Nathan Zuckerman continues, 13 years after novelist Nathan Zuckerman first appeared in Roth's 1974 effort, My Life as a Man. In The Counterlife, the dentist Henry suffers an unsettling--and for Roth, a predictable--side effect to his heart medication: impotence, which leads him to undergo an ill-fated operation. The multi-layered plot line travels from New York to London to Israel, while the characters undergo a series of surprising transformations. In the words of Nathan, a change in one's life causes "a counterlife that is one's own anti-myth." It's vintage Roth.