Zuckerman Bound is a trilogy of novels by Philip Roth

Philip Roth

Philip Milton Roth is an American novelist. He gained fame with the 1959 novella Goodbye, Columbus, an irreverent and humorous portrait of Jewish-American life that earned him a National Book Award...

, originally published in 1985.

Plot

Each of the books follows the struggles and writing career of Roth's novelist alter ego

Alter ego

An alter ego is a second self, which is believe to be distinct from a person's normal or original personality. The term was coined in the early nineteenth century when dissociative identity disorder was first described by psychologists...

 Nathan Zuckerman

Nathan Zuckerman

Nathan Zuckerman is a fictional character who appears as the narrator or protagonist of many of Philip Roth's works of fiction.-Character:...

.

Contents

The bound trilogy consists of:

• The Ghost Writer
  The Ghost Writer
  The Ghost Writer is the first novel by Philip Roth to be narrated by Nathan Zuckerman, one of Roth's alter egos, and constitutes the first book in his Zuckerman Bound trilogy. The novel touches on themes common to many Roth works, including identity, the responsibilities of authors to their...
  
   (1979)
• Zuckerman Unbound
  Zuckerman Unbound
  -Nathan Zuckerman:The novel resumes the story of Roth's fictional alter ego Nathan Zuckerman that was inaugurated by Roth's previous novel The Ghost Writer.-Themes:...
  
   (1981)
• The Anatomy Lesson (1983)

And an epilogue:

• The Prague Orgy
  The Prague Orgy
  The Prague Orgy is a novella by Philip Roth. The short book is the epilogue to his trilogy Zuckerman Bound. The story follows Roth's alter ego Nathan Zuckerman, on a journey to Communist Prague in the 1970s seeking the unpublished manuscript of a martyred Yiddish writer...
  
   (1985)

Reception

Zuckerman Bound met with great acclaim upon publication. In The New York Times Book Review

The New York Times Book Review

The New York Times Book Review is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to The New York Times in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely read book review publications in the industry. The offices are located near Times Square in New York...

 critic Harold Bloom wrote "'Zuckerman Bound' merits something reasonably close to the highest level of esthetic praise for tragicomedy, partly because as a formal totality it becomes much more than the sum of its parts."

Different editions

The Library of America

Library of America

The Library of America is a nonprofit publisher of classic American literature.- Overview and history :Founded in 1979 with seed money from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, the LoA has published over 200 volumes by a wide range of authors from Mark Twain to Philip...

 edition, Zuckerman Bound: A Trilogy & Epilogue 1979–1985, also includes a previously unpublished television screenplay for The Prague Orgy.

External links

• Harold Bloom on Zuckerman Bound