Political Initiation in the Novels of Philip Roth

Claudia Franziska Brühwiler is Lecturer at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland.

• Prologue / I Framework / 1. Beginnings and Transitions in Political Science and Literature / II Classical Initiation Stories / 2. Political Awakenings in The Plot Against America and Indignation / 3. Guided by the Particularizer: I Married a Communist / 4. Political Odysseys: Prague, Israel, and Elsewhere / III Initiation as Radical Self-Invention / 5. Passing and Other Escapes from the Hereditary Predicament / 6. The Religious Void, or Terrorist Art: Fanaticism as a Quest for Identity / IV De-Initiation / 7. For Another Go: (Zucker)man as a Perpetual Initiand / Epilogue / Bibliography / Index

Brühwiler considers the 'ambiguities of beginnings' in Philip Roth’s oeuvre, looking specifically at Roth’s representation of the evolution of an individual’s political self... Exceedingly well researched, Political Initiation in the Novels of Philip Roth covers a wide range of Roth’s novels and the intertexts within them. Putting this fiction into conversation with predominant thinking in the social sciences, Brühwiler’s work not only serves as a model for Roth studies, but also as a model for interdisciplinary research overall.