The Library of America's definitive edition of Philip Roth's collected
works continues with two novels that heralded the beginning of a more
than decade-long creative explosion-one remarkable in an older writer
and hailed by critics as unparalleled in American literary history. In
the diabolically imaginative Operation Shylock (1993), a character
named Philip Roth encounters a look-alike who claims Roth's identity and
who tours Israel promoting a bizarre reverse exodus of the
Jews-proselytizing the real Roth is intent on stopping, even if it means
impersonating his impersonator.
This splendidly wicked book is how the critic Frank Kermode described
Sabbath's Theater (1995), a comic masterpiece of epic proportions
whose gargantuan hero, Mickey Sabbath, grieving the loss of his
unsurpassable mistress, embarks on a turbulent journey into his past
besieged by the ghosts of those who loved and hated him most.
LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization
founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by
publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most
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