Back Novels 1993–1995

Philip Roth: Novels 1993–1995

Operation Shylock | Sabbath’s Theater

Edited by Ross Miller

“The Library of America is entering one of the great periods of contemporary American literature [with] some of the best American writing anywhere, anytime. In the category I would unhesitatingly put Philip Roth’s Operation Shylock, published in 1993, which I would argue is Roth’s most underrated book.”—Eric Alterman The Nation

Overview

Overview

Save $90 when you buy all nine Philip Roth volumes.

This sixth volume of The Library of America’s definitive edition of Philip Roth’s collected works gathers two novels that marked the beginning of a decade-long creative explosion—one remarkable in an older writer and one heralded by critics as unparalleled in American literary history.

The fourth of the “Roth Books,” Operation Shylock, published in 1993 on Roth’s sixtieth birthday, presents the author in face-to-face confrontation with his double, a look-alike impostor—and perfect stranger—who has usurped his biography and 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, impassioned, pulsing with speculative intelligence and narrative energy, Operation Shylock is at once spy story, political thriller, meditation on identity, confession, and unfathomable journey through a volatile, frightening Middle East.

Sabbath’s Theater (1995) is a comic creation of epic proportions, and Mickey Sabbath, whose savage effrontery and mocking audacity are at the heart of the novel, is a gargantuan hero. Once a scandalously inventive puppeteer, Sabbath at sixty-four is still defiantly antagonistic and exceedingly libidinous. But ghost-ridden and grief-stricken after the death of his longtime Croatian mistress, the unsurpassable Drenka, he contrives a succession of farcical disasters that take him to the brink of madness and extinction. Two of the leading literary critics of the English-speaking world, Harold Bloom and Frank Kermode, have proposed Sabbath’s Theater as the finest American novel of the last quarter of the twentieth century.

Ross Miller, editor, is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Connecticut and has taught at Yale, Wesleyan, and Trinity College. His criticism has appeared in scholarly journals, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times. He is the author of American Apocalypse: The Great Fire and the Myth of Chicago and Here’s the Deal: The Buying and Selling of a Great American City.

This Library of America series edition is printed on acid-free paper and features Smyth-sewn binding, a full cloth cover, and a ribbon marker.

This volume is available for adoption in the Guardian of American Letters Fund.

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ISBN: 978-1-59853-078-0 842 pages

LOA books are distributed worldwide by Penguin Random House

N° 205 Library of America Series

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Philip Roth: Novels 1993–1995

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