Philip Roth: Novels 1993-1995

　　The Library of America's definitive edition of Philip Roth'scollected works continues with two novels that heralded thebeginning of a more than decade-long creative explosion-oneremarkable in an older writer and hailed by critics as unparalleledin American literary history. In the diabolically imaginativeOperation Shylock (1993), a character named Philip Roth encountersa look-alike who claims Roth's identity and who tours Israelpromoting a bizarre reverse exodus of the Jews-proselytizing the"real" Roth is intent on stopping, even if it means impersonatinghis impersonator.　　"This splendidly wicked book" is how the critic Frank Kermodedescribed Sabbath's Theater (1995), a comic masterpiece of epicproportions whose gargantuan hero, Mickey Sabbath, grieving theloss of his unsurpassable mistress, embarks on a turbulent journeyinto his past besieged by the ghosts of those who loved and hatedhim most.