Operation Shylock

WINNER OF THE PEN/FAULKNER AWARD

“One of Roth’s grand inventions…. [He is] a comic genius.” —The New York Review of Books

Wildly suspenseful and unexpectedly hilarious, Operation Shylock is the daring offspring of a propulsive spy story, a meditation on identity politics, an auto-fictional reckoning, and a confrontation with a volatile, nightmarish time in history.

In 1988, Philip Roth arrives in a Jerusalem thrown into chaos. The First Intifada has begun, and the country is equally enraptured and disturbed by the groundbreaking, televised trial of infamous Nazi camp guard, John Demjanjuk.

Amidst the mayhem, Roth encounters a man who has set out to spread “Diasporism,” a strange new ideology that advocates for a reverse-exodus of Ashkenazi Jews. Even more bizarre: This activist is also named Philip Roth, looks a lot like Philip Roth, and claims he is a celebrity author who has written all the same books as Philip Roth…

Roth is intent on stopping him, even if that means impersonating his own impersonator.