Operation Shylock: A Confession
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Book Description
Subtle, funny and furious - Observer
Product Description
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. suspensful, 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.
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33 of 33 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
'Operation Shylock' shows Philip Roth writing at his very best. It has all the ingedients you expect from a vintage Roth read: the ferocious humour, the taut style, the obsessive self analysis and the modernist concern with the status of the author. But 'Operation Shylock' is more than a simple rewriting of 'Portnoy's Complaint'. Roth's agonized engagement with his Jewish identity is as powerful as ever, but given breadth in this novel by an examination of the conflicts between Jews and Palestinians in Israel and the Occupied Territories which is by turns tragic and bitterly comic. The two leading characters of this novel are the novelist Philip Roth and the crazed Jewish activist...Philip Roth! The book begins with Roth discovering that he is being impersonated in Jerusalem by a man who is using his physical resemblance to the novelist for strange purposes of his own. By including not only himself but also his double in the book, Roth is able to masterfully explore how Jews might be (literally) in two minds over Israel. While we are enjoying the wonderful farce of Roth's attempts to track down and confront the fake Roth- which reads like Kafka with jokes- we are also taken on a highly intelligent tour of Palestine which always conveys that there are two sides to war in the Middle East. There are many things to admire in this book: the seamless mixing of fact and fiction, clear sighted sketches of aggrieved Palestinians and Holocaust survivors as well as breath takingly wild flights of fantasy. But above all (what is hardest to convey in a review) there is a delight in the possibilities of language to argue a case or to crack jokes, to stir up anger or simply to delight in its own cleverness. Experience it now.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I read this book over five years ago, and have read several Philip Roth books since, but this book made such an impression on me, that I still remember specific scenes, plots, and statements from it. This book, although often quite forgotten in the extensive bibliography of Roth, is one of the writer's best offerings. It shows Roth at his strongest, in terms of originality, depth, and insight into his own internal dilemmas. This book is great because it does not just simply tell a story; it makes a powerful, dangerous and fascinating contribution to the world of politics, and it does so elegantly, cleverly and with unmatched sophistication. For want of other words, this book is important.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
One of the joys of starting to read a novel by Philip Roth is that you do not know what to expect. This one is purportedly autobiographical - but it doesn't seem so likely to be genuinely autobiographical as, say, Patrimony (about his father). There's the author writing some years after the date at which the book is set, Philip Roth as protagonist, then another "Philip Roth" who is the double of Philip Roth who turns up in Jerusalem at the same time as the "real" Roth, with a bizarre plan for saving the Jews from their next nuclear conflict with the Arabs...and there are encounters with a friend from Roth's student days 30 years on, who has - apparently (though is it all a front?) - become a paranoid zealot, taking on the griefs of his father - and with Mossad (who orginally turn up in disguised form).
All in all, a tour de force. But, for me, not such an enjoyable tour de force as some of his earlier work (Our Gang is a great political satire). For the theme of encountering a double, Jose Saramago's The Double is more entertaining (though this is good); for the rights and wrongs of the Middle East, probably best not to seek out fiction! Worth reading, but may be best to start elsewhere with Roth...for example My Life as A Man.
All in all, a tour de force. But, for me, not such an enjoyable tour de force as some of his earlier work (Our Gang is a great political satire). For the theme of encountering a double, Jose Saramago's The Double is more entertaining (though this is good); for the rights and wrongs of the Middle East, probably best not to seek out fiction! Worth reading, but may be best to start elsewhere with Roth...for example My Life as A Man.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
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Philip Roth's 1993 novel Operation Shylock is an eminently readable, though undeniably at times confusing, literary mix of (apparent) fact and fiction and a biting satire on human... Read more
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The really moving story of a grown up son caring for his father's last year. If father-son feelings are important to you, read this book.
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In outlining my response to reading Operation Shylock (OS) and perhaps in doing so suggesting why you the reader should read this book, I must declare my position in relation to... Read more
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A thoughtful entertainment
Roth's prose is unquestionably of the top tier, superbly accurate and well written. I have to admit, however, to not finding him especially funny, as other admirers profess to. Read more
Published on 3 Mar 2007 by REB
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