The Prague Orgy: Philip Roth

In this surreal and powerful coda to the Zuckerman trilogy, Nathan Zuckerman is visiting Prague, where intellectuals come searching for Kafta, where half the population is spying on the other half, where misfits who don't submit decently to their misfortunes act out a comedy of manners in stylish decadence. Here Zuckerman meets Olga, and striking a deal with this strangely impressive woman is to bring home lessons for the successful American writer - lessons about oppression and resilience, laughter and Kafta, Jewishness and the unforeseen consequences of art.

In quest of the unpublished manuscript of a martyred Yiddish writer, the American novelist Nathan Zuckerman travels to Soviet-occupied Prague in the mid-1970s. There, in a nation straightjacketed by totalitarian Communism, he discovers a literary predicament, marked by institutionalized oppression, that is rather different from his own. He also discovers, among the oppressed writers with whom he quickly becomes embroiled in a series of bizarre and poignant adventures, an appealingly perverse kind of heroism.
The Prague Orgy, consisting of entries from protagonist Nathan Zuckerman's notebooks recording his sojourn among these outcast artists, completes the trilogy and epilogue "Zuckerman bound. It provides a startling ending to Roth's intricately designed magnum opus on the unforeseen consequences of art.
This Vintage edition is the first paperback publication of the epilogue.