''The Ghost Writer'' is a 1979 novel by the American author Philip Roth. It is the first of Roth's novels narrated by Nathan Zuckerman, one of the author's putative fictional

alter ego An alter ego (Latin for "other I", " doppelgänger") means an alternate self, which is believed to be distinct from a person's normal or true original personality. Finding one's alter ego will require finding one's other self, one with a differen ...

s, 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 subjects, and the condition of Jews in America. Parts of the novel are a reprise of ''

The Diary of Anne Frank ''The Diary of a Young Girl'', also known as ''The Diary of Anne Frank'', is a book of the writings from the Dutch-language diary kept by Anne Frank while she was in hiding for two years with her family during the Nazi occupation of the Neth ...

''. Moraru, Christian (2005
''Memorious discourse: reprise and representation in postmodernism''
pp.224-25

Plot introduction

Nathan Zuckerman is a promising young writer who spends a night in the home of E.I. Lonoff (a portrait, it has been argued, of Bernard Malamud or Henry Roth, or a composite of both), an established author whom Zuckerman idolizes. Also staying in the Lonoff home is Amy Bellette, a young woman with a vague past whom the narrator apparently comes to suspect of being Anne Frank, living in the United States anonymously, having survived the Holocaust. Many have observed similarities between Lonoff and Isaac Bashevis Singer.

Television movie

In 1983 a television adaptation was made of the book in the UK. It was directed by Tristram Powell and starred

Rose Arrick A rose is either a woody perennial flowering plant of the genus ''Rosa'' (), in the family Rosaceae (), or the flower it bears. There are over three hundred species and tens of thousands of cultivars. They form a group of plants that can be e ...

, Claire Bloom, Sam Wanamaker, Cecile Mann, MacIntyre Dixon, Mark Linn-Baker, Ralph Morse, Joseph Wiseman, and

Patricia Fellows Patricia is a female given name of Latin origin. Derived from the Latin word ''patrician'', meaning "noble"; it is the feminine form of the masculine given name Patrick. The name Patricia was the second most common female name in the United State ...

Critical reception

The book was widely praised at publication. In '' The New York Times Book Review'', critic Harold Bloom said of the three collected Zuckerman novels, "''Zuckerman Bound'' merits something reasonably close to the highest level of esthetic praise for tragicomedy." In 2018, ''The Ghost Writer'' was listed as one of Roth's seven essential books.

Awards

The Pulitzer committee for fiction selected ''The Ghost Writer'' for the prize in 1980. The Pulitzer board, which has final say over awarding the prize, overrode their decision and chose Norman Mailer's '' The Executioner's Song'' instead. The book was also a finalist for the 1980 National Book Award.

''Exit Ghost''

In 2007, Roth published the novel '' Exit Ghost'', which Michiko Kakutani in '' The New York Times'' called "elegiac" and "a kind of valedictory bookend to ''The Ghost Writer''."

External links

*
''The Ghost Writer'' on BFI

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ghost Writer 1979 American novels Novels by Philip Roth Books about Anne Frank Novels about writers American novels adapted into films Farrar, Straus and Giroux books Ghostwriting in fiction