This book is available as an Open Access ebook under a CC-BY_NC-ND licence. This is a comprehensive and definitive study of the Man Booker Prize-winning novelist, Howard Jacobson. It offers lucid, detailed and nuanced readings of each of Jacobson's novels, and makes a powerful case for the importance of his work in the landscape of contemporary fiction. Focusing on the themes of comedy, masculinity and Jewishness, the book emphasises the richness and diversity of Jacobson's work. Often described by others as 'the English Philip Roth' and by himself as 'the Jewish Jane Austen', Jacobson emerges here as a complex and often contradictory figure: a fearless novelist; a combative public intellectual; a polemical journalist; an unapologetic elitist and an irreverent outsider; an exuberant iconoclast and a sombre satirist. Never afraid of controversy, Jacobson tends to polarise readers; but love him or hate him, he is difficult to ignore. This book gives him the thorough consideration and the balanced evaluation that he deserves. -- .

Philip Roth scholars continue to reflect on what Philip Roth's retirement in 2012 means for the landscape of American literature and what his professed disappearance from the public eye in 2014 would mean for the future consideration of his legacy. This collection seeks to answer those questions in a scholarly way. Composed of eleven original essays written by accomplished scholars in the field of Philip Roth Studies, the collection is both relevant and engaging on three levels: it is the first of its kind to offer a scholarly retrospective of Roth's works and career; it considers Roth within the American literary imagination; and it speculates on Roth's legacy-particularly the enduring quality of his novels that will continue to resonate long after his retirement.

Philip Roth scholars continue to reflect on what Philip Roth's retirement in 2012 means for the landscape of American literature and what his professed disappearance from the public eye in 2014 would mean for the future consideration of his legacy. This collection seeks to answer those questions in a scholarly way. Composed of eleven original essays written by accomplished scholars in the field of Philip Roth Studies, the collection is both relevant and engaging on three levels: it is the first of its kind to offer a scholarly retrospective of Roth's works and career; it considers Roth within the American literary imagination; and it speculates on Roth's legacy-particularly the enduring quality of his novels that will continue to resonate long after his retirement.

This is a groundbreaking study of the most important contemporary American novelist, Philip Roth. Reading alongside a number of his contemporaries and focusing particularly on his later fiction, this book offers a highly accessible, informative and persuasive view of Roth as an intellectually adventurous and stylistically brilliant writer who constantly reinvents himself in surprising ways. Brauner identifies as a thread running through all of Roth's work the use of paradox, both as a rhetorical device and as an organising intellectual and ideological principle. Indispensable to Roth scholars and to everyone working in the field of contemporary American fiction, this study will also be of great interest to general readers and to students and teachers of English and American literature, American Studies and Jewish Studies. Old devotees will be encouraged to return to, and new readers to discover, Roth's work.

Provides critical overviews of the main writers and key themes of Anglophone Jewish fiction. This spell binding Companion highlights the wealth of diversity in this field, identifying and exploring key themes including immigration, Diaspora, the Holocaust, Judaism, assimilation, anti Semitism and Zionism. Each expert contributor analyses one of the main trends in Anglophone Jewish fiction and situates it in historical context. Anglophone Jewish fiction is discussed in relation to theoretical frameworks and areas of study including transatlanticism, transnationalism and globalisation; ethnicity and multiculturalism; post colonial studies, feminist studies and queer studies. The 31 essays are by contributors including Vicki Aarons (Trinity University, Texas), Eitan Bar Yosef (Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva), Valentine Cunningham (Corpus Christi, Oxford), Bryan Cheyette (University of Reading), Phyllis Lassner (Northwestern University), Ira Nadel (University of British Columbia), Beate Neumeier (University of Cologne) and Aranzazu Usandizaga (University of Barcelona). Highlights the rich diversity of the field and identifies its key themes, including immigration, Diaspora, the Holocaust, Judaism, assimilation and anti Semitism Zionism. It analyses the main trends in Anglophone Jewish fiction and situates them in historical context; discusses the place of Anglophone Jewish fiction in relation to:transatlanticism, transnationalism and globalisation; ethnicity and multiculturalism; post colonial studies, feminist studies and queer studies and the 29 essays are by contributors including Vicki Aarons (Trinity University, Texas), Efraim Sicher (Ben Gurion University, Sasha Senderovich (Princeton), Bryan Cheyette (University of Reading), Phyllis Lassner (Northwestern University), Ruth Gilbert (University of Winchester), Beate Neumeier (University of Cologne), Sandra Singer (University of Guelph).

This collection of essays represents a new departure for, and a potentially (re)defining moment in, literary Jewish Studies. It is the first volume to bring together 28 chapters covering a wide range of American, British, South African, Canadian and Australian Jewish fiction.The volume is divided into 3 parts American Jewish Fiction; British Jewish Fiction; and International and Transnational Anglophone Jewish Fiction but many of the essays cross over these boundaries and speak to each other implicitly, as well as, on occasion, explicitly. Extending and redefining the canon of modern Jewish fiction, the volume juxtaposes major authors with more marginal figures, revising and recuperating individual reputations, rediscovering forgotten and discovering new work, and in the process remapping the whole terrain. This volume opens windows onto vistas that previously had been obscured and opens doors for the next generation of studies that could not proceed without a wide-ranging, visionary empiricism grounding their work.

Philip Roth Studies, a peer-reviewed semiannual journal published by Purdue University Press in cooperation with the Philip Roth Society, welcomes all writing pertaining entirely or in part to Philip Roth, his fiction, and his literary and cultural significance.

This is a groundbreaking study of the most important contemporary American novelist, Philip Roth. Reading the author alongside a number of his contemporaries, and focusing particularly on his later fiction, this book offers a highly accessible, informative and persuasive view of Roth as an intellectually adventurous and stylistically brilliant writer who constantly reinvents himself in surprising ways. At the heart of this book are a number of detailed and nuanced readings of Roth's works both in terms of their relationships with each other and with fiction by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Thomas Pynchon, Tim O'Brien, Brett Easton Ellis, Stanley Elkin, Howard Jacobson and Jonathan Safran Foer. Brauner identifies as a thread running through all of Roth's work the use of paradox, both as a rhetorical device and as an organising intellectual and ideological principle. -- .