Operation Shylock: A Confession is a 1993 novel by American novelist Philip Roth .
148-454: The novel follows narrator "Philip Roth" on a journey to Israel , where he attends the trial of accused war criminal John Demjanjuk and becomes involved in an intelligence mission—the "Operation Shylock" of the title. While in Israel, the narrator seeks out an impersonator who has appropriated his identity. This man has Roth's facial features, goes by the same name, and uses Roth's status as
296-533: A 2001 election ; he carried out his plan to unilaterally withdraw from the Gaza Strip and spearheaded the construction of the West Bank barrier , ending the intifada. Between 2000 and 2008, 1,063 Israelis, 5,517 Palestinians and 64 foreign citizens were killed. In 2006, a Hezbollah artillery assault on Israel's northern border communities and a cross-border abduction of two Israeli soldiers precipitated
444-515: A Toyota dealership". Updike found it difficult to end the book, because he was "having so much fun" in the imaginary county Rabbit and his family inhabited. After writing Rabbit Is Rich , Updike published The Witches of Eastwick (1984), a playful novel about witches living in Rhode Island . He described it as an attempt to "make things right with my, what shall we call them, feminist detractors ". One of Updike's most popular novels, it
592-615: A civil war in 1947 after the United Nations (UN) proposed partitioning the land between them. The State of Israel declared its establishment on 14 May 1948. The armies of neighboring Arab states invaded the area of the former Mandate the next day, beginning the First Arab–Israeli War . Subsequent armistice agreements established Israeli control over 77 percent of the former Mandate territory. The majority of Palestinian Arabs were either expelled or fled in what
740-418: A post-operative sedative ( triazolam ) which was later banned in several countries after discovery that the manufacturer had not published studies showing a high risk of short term psychiatric disturbance. In March 1993, Roth maintained the veracity of his novel to The New York Times ' Esther B. Fein, who wrote, " Operation Shylock , Roth insists with a post-modern straight face, is a 'confession,' not
888-470: A unicameral parliament elected by proportional representation , the Knesset , which determines the makeup of the government headed by the prime minister and elects the figurehead president . Israel is the only country to have a revived official language, Hebrew . Its culture comprises Jewish and Jewish diaspora elements alongside Arab influences. Israel has one of the largest economies in
1036-532: A "late masterpiece overlooked or praised by rote in its day, only to be rediscovered by another generation", while others, though appreciating the English mastery in the book, thought it overly dense with minute detail and swamped by its scenic depictions and spiritual malaise. In Villages (2004), Updike returned to the familiar territory of infidelities in New England . His 22nd novel, Terrorist (2006),
1184-400: A Book (1970), Bech Is Back (1981) and Bech at Bay : A Quasi-Novel (1998). These stories were compiled as The Complete Henry Bech (2001) by Everyman's Library. Bech is a comical and self-conscious antithesis of Updike's own literary persona: Jewish, a World War II veteran, reclusive, and unprolific to a fault. In 1990, he published the last Rabbit novel, Rabbit at Rest , which won
1332-641: A Jewish " national home " in Palestine. Weizmann's interpretation of the declaration was that negotiations on the future of the country were to happen directly between Britain and the Jews, excluding Arabs. Jewish-Arab relations in Palestine deteriorated dramatically in the following years. In 1918 the Jewish Legion , primarily Zionist volunteers, assisted in the British conquest of Palestine . In 1920
1480-494: A Nazi death camp: a setting that amplifies the significance of Roth's favorite themes of identity and imposture, truth and fictionality, and gives the ostensibly zany, Quixote - esque plot an ultimately tragic historical resonance." Operation Shylock received the 1993 PEN/Faulkner Award for best novel. Roth would eventually become the first three-time winner of the award: for Shylock , 2001's The Human Stain , and 2007's Everyman . Israel Israel , officially
1628-858: A Palestinian uprising against Israeli rule, broke out in 1987, with waves of uncoordinated demonstrations and violence in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. Over the following six years, the intifada became more organized and included economic and cultural measures aimed at disrupting the Israeli occupation. Over 1,000 people were killed. During the 1991 Gulf War , the PLO supported Saddam Hussein and Iraqi missile attacks against Israel . Despite public outrage, Israel heeded American calls to refrain from hitting back. In 1992, Yitzhak Rabin became prime minister following an election in which his party called for compromise with Israel's neighbours. The following year, Shimon Peres on behalf of Israel and Mahmoud Abbas for
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#17327901020481776-431: A book you are predisposed to dislike, or committed by friendship to like. Do not imagine yourself a caretaker of any tradition, an enforcer of any party standards, a warrior in any ideological battle, a corrections officer of any kind. Never, never ... try to put the author "in his place," making of him a pawn in a contest with other reviewers. Review the book, not the reputation. Submit to whatever spell, weak or strong,
1924-617: A celebrity author to spread " Diasporism ", a counter- Zionist ideology advocating the return, to Europe, of all formerly European Jews who have become Israeli. The ensuing struggle between this doppelgänger-like stranger and "Roth", played against the backdrop of the Demjanjuk trial and the First Intifada , constitutes the book's primary storyline. Roth becomes romantically involved with Jinx Posseski, his doppelgänger's lover and partner in crime. This makes it harder for him to hold
2072-677: A computer program. Author and critic Martin Amis called it a "near-masterpiece". The novel S. (1989), uncharacteristically featuring a female protagonist, concluded Updike's reworking of Nathaniel Hawthorne 's The Scarlet Letter . Updike enjoyed working in series; in addition to the Rabbit novels and the Maples stories, a recurrent Updike alter ego is the moderately well-known, unprolific Jewish novelist and eventual Nobel laureate Henry Bech , chronicled in three comic short-story cycles: Bech,
2220-634: A de facto independent emirate in the Galilee. Ottoman attempts to subdue the sheikh failed. After Zahir's death the Ottomans regained control of the area. In 1799, governor Jazzar Pasha repelled an assault on Acre by Napoleon 's troops, prompting the French to abandon the Syrian campaign. In 1834, a revolt by Palestinian Arab peasants against Egyptian conscription and taxation policies under Muhammad Ali
2368-472: A dozen short-story collections, as well as poetry, art and literary criticism and children's books during his career. Hundreds of his stories, reviews, and poems appeared in The New Yorker starting in 1954. He also wrote regularly for The New York Review of Books . His most famous work is his "Rabbit" series (the novels Rabbit, Run ; Rabbit Redux ; Rabbit Is Rich ; Rabbit at Rest ; and
2516-438: A full scholarship to Harvard College , where he was the roommate of Christopher Lasch during their first year. Updike had already received recognition for his writing as a teenager by winning a Scholastic Art & Writing Award , and at Harvard he soon became well known among his classmates as a talented and prolific contributor to The Harvard Lampoon , of which he was president. He studied with dramatist Robert Chapman ,
2664-642: A lauded novel about an African dictatorship inspired by a visit he made to Africa, found Updike working in new territory. In 1980, he published another novel featuring Harry Angstrom, Rabbit Is Rich , which won the National Book Award , the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction —all three major American literary prizes. The novel found " Rabbit the fat and happy owner of
2812-846: A massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. The Israeli government responded with an assassination campaign against the organizers of the massacre, a bombing and a raid on the PLO headquarters in Lebanon . On 6 October 1973, the Egyptian and Syrian armies launched a surprise attack against Israeli forces in the Sinai Peninsula and Golan Heights, opening the Yom Kippur War . The war ended on 25 October with Israel repelling Egyptian and Syrian forces but suffering great losses. An internal inquiry exonerated
2960-546: A movement that sought to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, thus offering a solution to the Jewish question of the European states. Antisemitism, pogroms and official policies, in tsarist Russia led to the emigration of three million Jews in the years between 1882 and 1914, only 1% of which went to Palestine. Those who went to Palestine were driven primarily by ideas of self-determination and Jewish identity, rather than as
3108-452: A novel, and he means for us to take this every bit as seriously as the contents labels demanded by the strictures of the Food and Drug Administration. 'The book is true,' Roth said the other day. 'As you know, at the end of the book a Mossad operative made me realize it was in my interest to say this book was fiction. And I became quite convinced that it was in my interest to do that. So I added
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#17327901020483256-583: A part of Coele-Syria . Over the ensuing centuries, the Hellenization of the region led to cultural tensions that came to a head during the reign of Antiochus IV , giving rise to the Maccabean Revolt of 167 BCE. The civil unrest weakened Seleucid rule, and in the late 2nd century the semi-autonomous Hasmonean Kingdom of Judea arose, eventually attaining full independence and expanding into neighboring regions. The Roman Republic invaded
3404-405: A play ( Buchanan Dying , 1974), and a memoir ( Self-Consciousness , 1989). At the end of his life, Updike was working on a novel about St. Paul and early Christianity . Biographer Adam Begley wrote that Updike "transmuted the minutiae of his life" in prose, which enriched his readers at the cost of being "willing to sacrifice the happiness of people around him for his art". In 1953, while
3552-514: A poetry of "epigrammatical lucidity". His poetry has been praised for its engagement with "a variety of forms and topics", its "wit and precision", and for its depiction of topics familiar to American readers. British poet Gavin Ewart praised Updike for the metaphysical quality of his poetry and for his ability "to make the ordinary seem strange", and called him one of the few modern novelists capable of writing good poetry. Reading Endpoint aloud,
3700-661: A proclamation allowing the exiled Judean population to return to Judah. The construction of the Second Temple was completed c. 520 BCE . The Achaemenids ruled the region as the province of Yehud Medinata . In 332 BCE, Alexander the Great conquered the region as part of his campaign against the Achaemenid Empire . After his death, the area was controlled by the Ptolemaic and Seleucid empires as
3848-679: A regional power, with a capital at Samaria ; during the Omride dynasty , it controlled Samaria , Galilee , the upper Jordan Valley , the plain of Sharon and large parts of Transjordan . The Kingdom of Israel was conquered around 720 BCE by the Neo-Assyrian Empire . The Kingdom of Judah, under Davidic rule with its capital in Jerusalem , later became a client state of first the Neo-Assyrian Empire and then
3996-522: A response to pogroms or economic insecurity. The Second Aliyah (1904–1914) began after the Kishinev pogrom ; some 40,000 Jews settled in Palestine, although nearly half left eventually. Both the first and second waves of migrants were mainly Orthodox Jews . The Second Aliyah included Zionist socialist groups who established the kibbutz movement based on the idea of establishing a separate Jewish economy based exclusively on Jewish labor. Those of
4144-686: A secret alliance with the UK and France and overran the Sinai Peninsula in the Suez Crisis but was pressured to withdraw by the UN in return for guarantees of Israeli shipping rights. The war resulted in significant reduction of Israeli border infiltration. In the early 1960s, Israel captured Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Argentina and brought him to Israel for trial . Eichmann remains
4292-535: A series of coordinated attacks on Israel, leading to the start of the Israel–Hamas war . On that day, approximately 1,300 Israelis, predominantly civilians, were killed in communities near the Gaza Strip border and during a music festival . Over 200 hostages were kidnapped and taken to the Gaza Strip. After clearing militants from its territory, Israel launched one of the most destructive bombing campaigns in modern history and invaded Gaza on 27 October with
4440-560: A significant achievement in terms of literary reputation and even sales; some of his positive reviews helped jump-start the careers of such younger writers as Erica Jong , Thomas Mallon and Jonathan Safran Foer . Bad reviews by Updike sometimes caused controversy, as when in late 2008 he gave a "damning" review of Toni Morrison 's novel A Mercy . Updike was praised for his literary criticism's conventional simplicity and profundity, for being an aestheticist critic who saw literature on its own terms, and for his longtime commitment to
4588-425: A staunchly Pennsylvania boy." Similarly, Sylvie Mathé maintains that "Updike's most memorable legacy appears to be his homage to Pennsylvania." Critics emphasize his "inimitable prose style" and "rich description and language", often favorably compared to Proust and Nabokov . Some critics consider the fluency of his prose to be a fault, questioning the intellectual depth and thematic seriousness of his work given
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4736-399: A student at Harvard, Updike married Mary Entwistle Pennington , an art student at Radcliffe College and daughter of a prominent Unitarian minister. She accompanied him to Oxford , England, where she attended art school and their first child, Elizabeth , was born in 1955. The couple had three more children together: David (born 1957), Michael (born 1959), and Miranda (born 1960). Updike
4884-651: A year of fighting, a ceasefire was declared and temporary borders, known as the Green Line , were established. Jordan annexed what became known as the West Bank , including East Jerusalem , and Egypt occupied the Gaza Strip . Over 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled by Zionist militias and the Israeli military —what would become known in Arabic as the nakba ('catastrophe'). The events also led to
5032-481: A year on average. Updike populated his fiction with characters who "frequently experience personal turmoil and must respond to crises relating to religion, family obligations, and marital infidelity". His fiction is distinguished by its attention to the concerns, passions, and suffering of average Americans, its emphasis on Christian theology , and its preoccupation with sexuality and sensual detail. His work has attracted significant critical attention and praise, and he
5180-420: Is Couples (1968), a novel about adultery in a small fictional Massachusetts town called Tarbox. It garnered Updike an appearance on the cover of Time magazine with the headline "The Adulterous Society". Both the magazine article and, to an extent, the novel struck a chord of national concern over whether American society was abandoning all social standards of conduct in sexual matters. The Coup (1978),
5328-637: Is being cast. Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys of reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end. He reviewed "nearly every major writer of the 20th century and some 19th-century authors", typically in The New Yorker , always trying to make his reviews "animated". He also championed young writers, comparing them to his own literary heroes including Vladimir Nabokov and Marcel Proust . Good reviews from Updike were often seen as
5476-520: Is certainly one of the great American novelists of the 20th century. — Martin Amis Updike is considered one of the greatest American fiction writers of his generation. He was widely praised as America's "last true man of letters", with an immense and far-reaching influence on many writers. The excellence of his prose style is acknowledged even by critics skeptical of other aspects of Updike's work. Several scholars have called attention to
5624-511: Is debate about the earliest existence of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah and their extent and power. While it is unclear if there was a United Kingdom of Israel , historians and archaeologists agree that the northern Kingdom of Israel existed by ca. 900 BCE and the Kingdom of Judah by ca. 850 BCE. The Kingdom of Israel was the more prosperous of the two and soon developed into
5772-515: Is highly amenable to the PLO , a former friend named George Ziad, who knew the real Philip Roth in college, attempts to put Roth in contact with the actual PLO. (Ziad thinks Roth is a Diasporist, thanks to Moishe Pipik.) Roth intends to refuse until he is contacted by agents of Mossad , Israel's intelligence agency. They urge him to accept Ziad's offer, so that he can become an undercover agent and gather intelligence for Israel. Roth apparently does so, but
5920-655: Is in Jerusalem , while Tel Aviv is the country's largest urban area and economic center . Israel is located in a region known to Jews as the Land of Israel , synonymous with the Palestine region , the Holy Land , and Canaan . In antiquity, it was home to the Canaanite civilization followed by the kingdoms of Israel and Judah . Situated at a continental crossroad , the region experienced demographic changes under
6068-618: Is known as the Nakba , with those remaining becoming the new state's main minority. Over the following decades, Israel's population increased greatly as the country received an influx of Jews who emigrated, fled or were expelled from the Muslim world . Following the 1967 Six-Day War Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Egyptian Sinai Peninsula and Syrian Golan Heights . Israel established and continues to expand settlements across
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6216-423: Is widely considered one of the great American writers of his time. Updike's highly distinctive prose style features a rich, unusual, sometimes arcane vocabulary as conveyed through the eyes of "a wry, intelligent authorial voice that describes the physical world extravagantly while remaining squarely in the realist tradition". He described his style as an attempt "to give the mundane its beautiful due". Updike
6364-509: The jizya tax. Non-Muslim Ottoman subjects faced geographic and lifestyle restrictions, though these were not always enforced. The millet system organized non-Muslims into autonomous communities on the basis of religion. The concept of the "return" remained a symbol within religious Jewish belief which emphasized that their return should be determined by Divine Providence rather than human action. Leading Zionist historian Shlomo Avineri describes this connection: "Jews did not relate to
6512-557: The Four Holy Cities —Jerusalem, Tiberias, Hebron , and Safed —and in 1697, Rabbi Yehuda Hachasid led a group of 1,500 Jews to Jerusalem. A 1660 Druze revolt against the Ottomans destroyed Safed and Tiberias . In the second half of the 18th century, Eastern European Jews who were opponents of Hasidism , known as the Perushim , settled in Palestine. In the late 18th century, local Arab Sheikh Zahir al-Umar created
6660-856: The Gaza Strip in the ongoing Israel–Hamas war . Observers, including the UN Special Committee to investigate Israeli practices and United Nations Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese , have cited statements by senior Israeli officials that may indicate an " intent to destroy " (in whole or in part) Gaza's population, a necessary condition for the legal threshold of genocide to be met. A majority of mostly US-based Middle East scholars believe Israel's actions in Gaza were intended to make it uninhabitable for Palestinians, and 75% of them say Israel's actions in Gaza constitute either genocide or "major war crimes akin to genocide". On 29 December 2023, South Africa instituted proceedings against Israel at
6808-605: The International Court of Justice pursuant to the Genocide Convention , John Updike John Hoyer Updike (March 18, 1932 – January 27, 2009) was an American novelist, poet, short-story writer, art critic , and literary critic . One of only four writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once (the others being Booth Tarkington , William Faulkner , and Colson Whitehead ), Updike published more than twenty novels, more than
6956-727: The Iran–Iraq War , the Israeli air force destroyed Iraq's sole nuclear reactor, then under construction, in order to impede the Iraqi nuclear weapons program. Following a series of PLO attacks in 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon to destroy the PLO bases. In the first six days, Israel destroyed the military forces of the PLO in Lebanon and decisively defeated the Syrians. An Israeli government inquiry (the Kahan Commission ) held Begin and several Israeli generals indirectly responsible for
7104-633: The Israeli–Palestinian conflict after the interim Oslo Accords have not succeeded, and the country has engaged in several wars and clashes with Palestinian militant groups . Israel's practices in its occupation of the Palestinian territories have drawn sustained international criticism—along with accusations that it has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Palestinian people—from human rights organizations and United Nations officials. The country's Basic Laws establish
7252-596: The Labor Party . Later that year, Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat made a trip to Israel and spoke before the Knesset in what was the first recognition of Israel by an Arab head of state. Sadat and Begin signed the Camp David Accords (1978) and the Egypt–Israel peace treaty (1979). In return, Israel withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula and agreed to enter negotiations over autonomy for Palestinians in
7400-784: The Late Bronze Age (1550–1200 BCE), large parts of Canaan formed vassal states of the New Kingdom of Egypt . As a result of the Late Bronze Age collapse , Canaan fell into chaos, and Egyptian control over the region collapsed. A people named Israel appear for the first time in the Merneptah Stele, an ancient Egyptian inscription which dates to about 1200 BCE. Ancestors of the Israelites are thought to have included ancient Semitic-speaking peoples native to this area. Modern archaeological accounts suggest that
7548-739: The League of Nations granted Britain the Mandate for Palestine under terms which included the Balfour Declaration with its promise to the Jews and with similar provisions regarding the Arab Palestinians. The population of the area was predominantly Arab and Muslim, with Jews accounting for about 11% and Arab Christians about 9.5% of the population. The Third (1919–1923) and Fourth Aliyahs (1924–1929) brought an additional 100,000 Jews to Palestine. The rise of Nazism , and
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#17327901020487696-518: The Library of America issued a two-volume boxed edition of 186 stories under the title The Collected Stories . In 1971, Updike published a sequel to Rabbit, Run called Rabbit Redux , his response to the 1960s; Rabbit reflected much of Updike's resentment and hostility towards the social and political changes that beset the United States during that time. Updike's early Olinger period
7844-726: The Neo-Babylonian Empire . It is estimated that the region's population was around 400,000 in the Iron Age II . In 587/6 BCE, following a revolt in Judah , King Nebuchadnezzar II besieged and destroyed Jerusalem and Solomon's Temple , dissolved the kingdom and exiled much of the Judean elite to Babylon . After capturing Babylon in 539 BCE, Cyrus the Great , founder of the Achaemenid Empire , issued
7992-471: The Royal Navy and the refugees placed in detention camps in Atlit and Cyprus . On 22 July 1946, Irgun bombed the British administrative headquarters for Palestine, killing 91. The attack was a response to Operation Agatha (a series of raids, including one on the Jewish Agency , by the British) and was the deadliest directed at the British during the Mandate era. The Jewish insurgency continued throughout 1946 and 1947 despite concerted efforts by
8140-469: The Sabra and Shatila massacre and held Defense Minister Ariel Sharon as bearing "personal responsibility". Sharon was forced to resign. In 1985, Israel responded to a Palestinian terrorist attack in Cyprus by bombing the PLO headquarters in Tunisia. Israel withdrew from most of Lebanon in 1986 but maintained a borderland buffer zone in southern Lebanon until 2000, from where Israeli forces engaged in conflict with Hezbollah . The First Intifada ,
8288-456: The Sasanian conquest of Jerusalem and the short-lived Jewish revolt against Heraclius in 614 CE, the Byzantine Empire reconsolidated control of the area in 628. In 634–641 CE, the Rashidun Caliphate conquered the Levant . Over the next six centuries, control of the region transferred between the Umayyad , Abbasid , Fatimid caliphates, and subsequently the Seljuk and Ayyubid dynasties. The population drastically decreased during
8436-441: The State of Israel , is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia . It is bordered by Lebanon and Syria to the north, the West Bank and Jordan to the east, the Gaza Strip and Egypt to the southwest, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. The country also has a small coastline on the Red Sea at its southernmost point, and part of the Dead Sea lies along its eastern border. Israel's proclaimed capital
8584-557: The Ubeidiya prehistoric site . The Skhul and Qafzeh hominins , dating back 120,000 years, are some of the earliest traces of anatomically modern humans outside of Africa. The Natufian culture , which may have been linked to Proto-Afroasiatic language , emerged by the 10th millennium BCE, followed by the Ghassulian culture by around 4,500 BCE. Early references to "Canaanites" and " Canaan " appear in Near Eastern and Egyptian texts ( c. 2000 BCE); these populations were structured as politically independent city-states . During
8732-413: The destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple and a sizable portion of the population being killed or displaced. A second uprising known as the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–136 CE) initially allowed the Jews to form an independent state, but the Romans brutally crushed the rebellion, devastating and depopulating Judea's countryside. Jerusalem was rebuilt as a Roman colony ( Aelia Capitolina ), and
8880-408: The experimental fiction of Seek My Face (2002). In the midst of these, he wrote what was for him a more conventional novel, In the Beauty of the Lilies (1996), a historical saga spanning several generations and exploring themes of religion and cinema in America. It is considered the most successful novel of Updike's late career. Some critics have predicted that posterity may consider the novel
9028-400: The illegally occupied territories , contrary to international law, and has effectively annexed East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights in moves largely unrecognized internationally. After the 1973 Yom Kippur War , Israel signed peace treaties with Egypt —returning the Sinai in 1982—and Jordan . In the 2020s, it normalized relations with more Arab countries. However, efforts to resolve
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#17327901020489176-419: The occupied West Bank , increasing friction with the Palestinians there. The 1980 Jerusalem Law was believed by some to reaffirm Israel's 1967 annexation of Jerusalem by government decree and reignited international controversy over the status of the city . No Israeli legislation has defined the territory of Israel, and no act specifically included East Jerusalem therein. In 1981 Israel effectively annexed
9324-435: The 2010s, increasing regional cooperation between Israel and Arab League countries have been established, culminating in the signing of the Abraham Accords . The Israeli security situation shifted from the traditional Arab–Israeli conflict towards the Iran–Israel proxy conflict and direct confrontation with Iran during the Syrian civil war . On 7 October 2023, Palestinian militant groups from Gaza, led by Hamas, launched
9472-464: The 20th. In the lecture he argued that American art, until the expressionist movement of the 20th century in which America declared its artistic "independence", is characterized by an insecurity not found in the artistic tradition of Europe . In Updike's own words: Two centuries after Jonathan Edwards sought a link with the divine in the beautiful clarity of things, William Carlos Williams wrote in introducing his long poem Paterson that "for
9620-413: The British military and Palestine Police Force to suppress it. British efforts to mediate with Jewish and Arab representatives also failed as the Jews were unwilling to accept any solution that did not involve a Jewish state and suggested a partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, while the Arabs were adamant that a Jewish state in any part of Palestine was unacceptable and that the only solution
9768-417: The British would evacuate. As Arab militias and gangs attacked Jewish areas, they were faced mainly by the Haganah as well as the smaller Irgun and Lehi. In April 1948, the Haganah moved onto the offensive. On 14 May 1948, the day before the expiration of the British Mandate, David Ben-Gurion , the head of the Jewish Agency, declared "the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel". The following day,
9916-410: The City of Jerusalem [...] the last to be under an International Trusteeship System". Meanwhile, the Jewish insurgency continued and peaked in July 1947, with a series of widespread guerrilla raids culminating in the Sergeants affair , in which the Irgun took two British sergeants hostage as attempted leverage against the planned execution of three Irgun operatives. After the executions were carried out,
10064-433: The Golan Heights from Syria. Jerusalem's boundaries were enlarged, incorporating East Jerusalem. The 1949 Green Line became the administrative boundary between Israel and the occupied territories . Following the 1967 war and the " Three Nos " resolution of the Arab League, Israel faced attacks from the Egyptians in the Sinai Peninsula during the 1967–1970 War of Attrition , and from Palestinian groups targeting Israelis in
10212-402: The Golan Heights. The international community largely rejected these moves, with the UN Security Council declaring both the Jerusalem Law and the Golan Heights Law null and void. Several waves of Ethiopian Jews immigrated to Israel since the 1980s, while between 1990 and 1994, immigration from the post-Soviet states increased Israel's population by twelve percent. On 7 June 1981, during
10360-585: The Holocaust. During the 1950s, Israel was frequently attacked by Palestinian fedayeen , nearly always against civilians, mainly from the Egyptian-occupied Gaza Strip, leading to several Israeli reprisal operations . In 1956, the UK and France aimed at regaining control of the Suez Canal , which Egypt had nationalized. The continued blockade of the Suez Canal and Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, together with increasing fedayeen attacks against Israel's southern population and recent Arab threatening statements, prompted Israel to attack Egypt. Israel joined
10508-413: The Irgun killed the two British soldiers, hanged their bodies from trees, and left a booby trap at the scene which injured a British soldier. The incident caused widespread outrage in the UK. In September 1947, the British cabinet decided to evacuate Palestine as the Mandate was no longer tenable. On 29 November 1947, the General Assembly adopted Resolution 181 (II) . The plan attached to the resolution
10656-815: The Israelites and their culture branched out of the Canaanite peoples through the development of a distinct monolatristic —and later monotheistic —religion centered on Yahweh . They spoke an archaic form of Hebrew , known as Biblical Hebrew . Around the same time, the Philistines settled on the southern coastal plain . Most modern scholars agree that the Exodus narrative in the Torah and Old Testament did not take place as depicted; however, some elements of these traditions do have historical roots . There
10804-663: The Levant was fairly cosmopolitan, with religious freedoms for Christians, Muslims, and Jews . In 1561 the Ottoman sultan invited Sephardi Jews escaping the Spanish Inquisition to settle in and rebuild the city of Tiberias . Under the Ottoman Empire's millet system , Christians and Jews were considered dhimmi (meaning "protected") under Ottoman law in exchange for loyalty to the state and payment of
10952-594: The Middle East and among the highest GDP per capita and standards of living in Asia . One of the most technologically advanced and developed countries in the world, it spends proportionally more on research and development than any other and is widely believed to possess nuclear weapons . Under the British Mandate (1920–1948), the entire region was known as Palestine . Upon establishment in 1948 ,
11100-475: The Mississippi of Faulkner's novels, the world of Updike's novels is fictional (as are such towns as Olinger and Brewer), while at the same time it is recognizable as a particular American region." Sanford Pinsker observes that "Updike always felt a bit out of place" in places like "Ipswich, Massachusetts, where he lived for most of his life. In his heart—and, more important, in his imagination—Updike remained
11248-657: The PLO signed the Oslo Accords , which gave the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) the right to govern parts of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The PLO also recognized Israel's right to exist and pledged an end to terrorism. In 1994, the Israel–Jordan peace treaty was signed, making Jordan the second Arab country to normalize relations with Israel. Arab public support for the Accords
11396-689: The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Over 500 pages long, the novel is among Updike's most celebrated. In 2000, Updike included the novella Rabbit Remembered in his collection Licks of Love , drawing the Rabbit saga to a close. His Pulitzers for the last two Rabbit novels make Updike one of only four writers to have won two Pulitzer Prizes for Fiction, the others being William Faulkner , Booth Tarkington , and Colson Whitehead . In 1995, Everyman's Library collected and canonized
11544-635: The Second Aliyah who became leaders of the Yishuv in the coming decades believed that the Jewish settler economy should not depend on Arab labor. This would be a dominant source of antagonism with the Arab population, with the new Yishuv's nationalist ideology overpowering its socialist one. Though the immigrants of the Second Aliyah largely sought to create communal Jewish agricultural settlements, Tel Aviv
11692-593: The Sinai Peninsula since 1957, and blocked Israel's access to the Red Sea. Other Arab states mobilized their forces. Israel reiterated that these actions were a casus belli and launched a pre-emptive strike ( Operation Focus ) against Egypt in June. Jordan, Syria and Iraq attacked Israel. In the Six-Day War , Israel captured and occupied the West Bank from Jordan, the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, and
11840-645: The West Bank and the Gaza Strip. On 11 March 1978, a PLO guerilla raid from Lebanon led to the Coastal Road massacre . Israel responded by launching an invasion of southern Lebanon to destroy PLO bases. Most PLO fighters withdrew, but Israel was able to secure southern Lebanon until a UN force and the Lebanese army could take over. The PLO soon resumed its insurgency against Israel, and Israel carried out numerous retaliatory attacks. Meanwhile, Begin's government provided incentives for Israelis to settle in
11988-519: The adult male Palestinian Arab population was killed, wounded, imprisoned or exiled. The British introduced restrictions on Jewish immigration to Palestine with the White Paper of 1939 . With countries around the world turning away Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust , a clandestine movement known as Aliyah Bet was organized to bring Jews to Palestine. By the end of World War II , 31% of
12136-456: The armies of four Arab countries—Egypt, Syria, Transjordan and Iraq—entered what had been Mandatory Palestine, launching the 1948 Arab–Israeli War ; contingents from Yemen , Morocco , Saudi Arabia , and Sudan joined the war. The purpose of the invasion was to prevent the establishment of the Jewish state and to "sweep them [Jews] into the sea". The Arab League stated the invasion was to restore order and prevent further bloodshed. After
12284-694: The basis that the partition plan privileged European interests over those of the Palestinians, and indicated that they would reject any other plan of partition. On 1 December 1947, the Arab Higher Committee proclaimed a three-day strike, and riots broke out in Jerusalem . The situation spiraled into a civil war . Colonial Secretary Arthur Creech Jones announced that the British Mandate would end on 15 May 1948, at which point
12432-467: The church and the authorities. Many Jews had emigrated to flourishing diaspora communities, while locally there was both Christian immigration and local conversion. By the middle of the 5th century, there was a Christian majority. Towards the end of the 5th century, Samaritan revolts erupted, continuing until the late 6th century and resulting in a large decrease in the Samaritan population. After
12580-479: The coruscating linguistic brilliance, the profanity and playfulness (and the deep, often irritated engagement with Jewishness) that characterizes his earlier novels rise to new — and, I would say, philosophical — heights. For the two Roths finally meet in a Jerusalem that is anxiously hosting the trial of John Demjanjuk, the Ukrainian-born Ohio autoworker who was revealed to have been a sadistic guard at
12728-429: The country formally adopted the name State of Israel ( Hebrew : מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל , Medīnat Yisrā'el [mediˈnat jisʁaˈʔel] ; Arabic : دَوْلَة إِسْرَائِيل , Dawlat Isrāʼīl , [dawlat ʔisraːˈʔiːl] ) after other proposed names including Land of Israel ( Eretz Israel ), Ever (from ancestor Eber ), Zion , and Judea , were considered but rejected. The name Israel
12876-458: The critic Charles McGrath claimed that he found "another, deeper music" in Updike's poetry, finding that Updike's wordplay "smooths and elides itself" and has many subtle "sound effects". John Keenan, who praised the collection Endpoint as "beautiful and poignant", noted that his poetry's engagement with "the everyday world in a technically accomplished manner seems to count against him". Updike
13024-632: The crusaders before Muslim rule was fully restored by the Mamluk sultans of Egypt in 1291. In 1516, the Ottoman Empire conquered the region and ruled it as part of Ottoman Syria . Two violent incidents took place against Jews, the 1517 Safed attacks and the 1517 Hebron attacks , after the Turkish Ottomans ousted the Mamluks during the Ottoman–Mamluk War . Under the Ottoman Empire,
13172-493: The destruction of most of Palestine's Arab culture , identity , and national aspirations . Some 156,000 Arabs remained and became Arab citizens of Israel . By United Nations General Assembly Resolution 273 , Israel was admitted as a member of the UN on 11 May 1949. In the early years of the state, the Labor Zionist movement led by Prime Minister Ben-Gurion dominated Israeli politics . Immigration to Israel during
13320-553: The director of Harvard's Loeb Drama Center. He graduated summa cum laude in 1954 with a degree in English and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa . Upon graduation, Updike attended the Ruskin School of Art at the University of Oxford with the ambition of becoming a cartoonist . After returning to the United States, Updike and his family moved to New York, where he became a regular contributor to The New Yorker . This
13468-406: The ebb and flow of Updike's first marriage; "Separating" (1974) and "Here Come the Maples" (1976) related to his divorce. These stories also reflect the role of alcohol in 1970s America. They were the basis for the television movie also called Too Far To Go , broadcast by NBC in 1979. Updike's short stories were collected in several volumes published by Alfred A. Knopf over five decades. In 2013,
13616-638: The end of the book reveals that Operation Shylock is (supposedly) missing an excised chapter where Roth describes the details and outcome of his Mossad mission. The book ends without resolving the questions the "lost" chapter raises, including whether Roth continues to support the Israeli cause, and whether or not it is important for Roth to tell his readers such details about his life. The revelation that Mossad has been watching Roth (largely through disguised agents) and trying to involve him in Israel's political intrigues leaves Roth looking rather hapless and myopic in terms of his ability to understand realpolitik and
13764-401: The end shows the right stuff." Updike closed with the admonition, "It should be read by anyone who cares about (1) Israel and its repercussions, (2) the development of the postmodern, deconstruction-minded novel, (3) Philip Roth." In The New York Times Book Review , novelist and poet D. M. Thomas called the novel "an impassioned quarrel...Despite the seriousness of its theme, the book carries
13912-583: The entirety of the Gaza Strip and over 90% of the West Bank with Jerusalem as a shared capital. Each side blamed the other for the failure of the talks. In late 2000, after a controversial visit by Sharon to the Temple Mount , the Second Intifada began. Palestinian suicide bombings were a recurrent feature. Some commentators contend that the intifada was pre-planned by Arafat after the collapse of peace talks. Sharon became prime minister in
14060-647: The fact that he had departed the magazine's employment after only two years. Updike's memoir indicates that he stayed in his "corner of New England to give its domestic news" with a focus on the American home from the point of view of a male writer. Updike's contract with the magazine gave it right of first offer for his short-story manuscripts, but William Shawn , The New Yorker 's editor from 1952 to 1987, rejected several as too explicit. The Maple short stories, collected in Too Far To Go (1979), reflected
14208-463: The feeling of creative joy. One feels that Roth feels that he's let rip. " The novel appears to have grown in stature since publication. In 2006, when New York Times Book Review editor Sam Tanenhaus mailed a short letter to "a couple of hundred prominent writers, critics, editors," asking that they identify the best work of American fiction published in the preceding quarter-century, several respondents named Operation Shylock. (The eventual winner
14356-518: The following several centuries, dropping from an estimated 1 million during Roman and Byzantine periods to about 300,000 by the early Ottoman period , and there was a steady process of Arabization and Islamization . The end of the 11th century brought the Crusades , papally -sanctioned incursions of Christian crusaders intent on wresting Jerusalem and the Holy Land from Muslim control and establishing crusader states . The Ayyubids pushed back
14504-488: The four novels as the omnibus Rabbit Angstrom ; Updike wrote an introduction in which he described Rabbit as "a ticket to the America all around me. What I saw through Rabbit's eyes was more worth telling than what I saw through my own, though the difference was often slight." Updike later called Rabbit "a brother to me, and a good friend. He opened me up as a writer." After the publication of Rabbit at Rest , Updike spent
14652-436: The government of responsibility for failures before and during the war, but public anger forced Prime Minister Golda Meir to resign. In July 1976, an airliner was hijacked in flight from Israel to France by Palestinian guerrillas; Israeli commandos rescued 102 of 106 Israeli hostages . The 1977 Knesset elections marked a major turning point in Israeli political history as Menachem Begin 's Likud party took control from
14800-419: The importance of place, and especially of southeast Pennsylvania , in Updike's life and work. Bob Batchelor has described "Updike's Pennsylvania sensibility" as one with profound reaches that transcend time and place, such that in his writing, he used "Pennsylvania as a character" that went beyond geographic or political boundaries. SA Zylstra has compared Updike's Pennsylvania to Faulkner's Mississippi: "As with
14948-528: The increasing persecution of Jews in 1930s Europe led to the Fifth Aliyah , with an influx of a quarter of a million Jews. This was a major cause of the Arab revolt of 1936–39 , which was suppressed by British security forces and Zionist militias. Several hundred British security personnel and Jews were killed; 5,032 Arabs were killed, 14,760 were wounded, and 12,622 were detained. An estimated ten percent of
15096-706: The influence of J. D. Salinger (" A&P "); John Cheever ("Snowing in Greenwich Village"); and the Modernists Marcel Proust , Henry Green , James Joyce , and Vladimir Nabokov . During this time, Updike underwent a profound spiritual crisis. Suffering from a loss of religious faith, he began reading Søren Kierkegaard and the theologian Karl Barth . Both deeply influenced his own religious beliefs, which in turn figured prominently in his fiction. He believed in Christianity for
15244-497: The late 1940s and early 1950s was aided by the Israeli Immigration Department and the non-government sponsored Mossad LeAliyah Bet ( lit. "Institute for Immigration B "). The latter engaged in clandestine operations in countries, particularly in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, where the lives of Jews were in danger and exit was difficult. Mossad LeAliyah Bet was disbanded in 1953. The immigration
15392-457: The latter were often re-designated for the former, so Jews newly arrived from Arab lands generally ended up staying longer in transit camps. During this period, food, clothes and furniture were rationed in what became known as the austerity period . The need to solve the crisis led Ben-Gurion to sign a reparations agreement with West Germany that triggered mass protests by Jews angered at the idea that Israel could accept monetary compensation for
15540-578: The latter won the National Book Award . Rabbit, Run featured Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom , a former high school basketball star and middle-class paragon who would become Updike's most enduring and critically acclaimed character. Updike wrote three additional novels about him. Rabbit, Run was featured in Time ' s All-TIME 100 Greatest Novels. Updike's career and reputation were nurtured and expanded by his long association with The New Yorker , which published him frequently throughout his career, despite
15688-408: The line against the imposter, because he feels guilty. He also has several unsuccessful face-to-face confrontations with his double; each time, the other "Philip Roth" (whom Roth dubs "Moishe Pipik") gets the better of the original, genuine Roth by accusing him of taking his fame too lightly, and eschewing his responsibilities to people in the real world. Because the central proposition of "Diasporism"
15836-780: The month-long Second Lebanon War . In 2007 the Israeli Air Force destroyed a nuclear reactor in Syria. In 2008, a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel collapsed, resulting in the three-week Gaza War . In what Israel described as a response to over a hundred Palestinian rocket attacks on southern Israeli cities, Israel began an operation in the Gaza Strip in 2012, lasting eight days. Israel started another operation in Gaza following an escalation of rocket attacks by Hamas in July 2014. In May 2021 another round of fighting took place in Gaza and Israel, lasting eleven days. By
15984-419: The note to the reader as I was asked to do. I'm just a good sayan.'" Roth's long-time professional acquaintance John Updike gave the novel a famously caustic review in The New Yorker . Updike found the book "an orgy of argumentation...this hard-pressed reviewer was reminded not only of Shaw but of Hamlet , which also has too many characters, numerous long speeches, and a vacillating, maddening hero who in
16132-475: The novella Rabbit Remembered ), which chronicles the life of the middle-class everyman Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom over the course of several decades, from young adulthood to death. Both Rabbit Is Rich (1981) and Rabbit at Rest (1990) were awarded the Pulitzer Prize . Describing his subject as "the American small town, Protestant middle class", critics recognized his careful craftsmanship, his unique prose style, and his prolific output – a book
16280-498: The occupied territories, globally, and in Israel. Most important among the Palestinian and Arab groups was the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), established in 1964, which initially committed itself to "armed struggle as the only way to liberate the homeland". In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Palestinian groups launched attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets around the world, including
16428-403: The one hand, and Syria and Lebanon on the other. Arab nationalists led by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser refused to recognize Israel and called for its destruction. By 1966 Israeli-Arab relations had deteriorated to the point of battles taking place between Israeli and Arab forces. In May 1967, Egypt massed its army near the border with Israel, expelled UN peacekeepers stationed in
16576-507: The only person executed in Israel by conviction in an Israeli civilian court. In 1963, Israel was engaged in a diplomatic standoff with the United States in relation to the Israeli nuclear programme . Since 1964 Arab countries, concerned over Israeli plans to divert waters of the Jordan River into the coastal plain , had been trying to divert the headwaters to deprive Israel of water resources, provoking tensions between Israel on
16724-705: The patriarch Jacob who, according to the Hebrew Bible , was given the name after he successfully wrestled with the Angel of the Lord . The earliest known archaeological artifact to mention the word Israel as a collective is the Merneptah Stele of ancient Egypt (dated to the late 13th century BCE). Early hominin presence in the Levant , where Israel is located, dates back at least 1.5 million years based on
16872-454: The poet there are no ideas but in things." No ideas but in things. The American artist, first born into a continent without museums and art schools, took Nature as his only instructor, and things as his principal study. A bias toward the empirical, toward the evidential object in the numinous fullness of its being, leads to a certain lininess, as the artist intently maps the visible in a New World that feels surrounded by chaos and emptiness. He
17020-400: The polish of his language and the perceived lightness of his themes, while others criticized Updike for misogynistic depictions of women and sexual relationships. Other critics argue that Updike's "dense vocabulary and syntax functions as a distancing technique to mediate the intellectual and emotional involvement of the reader". On the whole, however, Updike is extremely well regarded as
17168-417: The population of Palestine was Jewish. The UK found itself facing a Jewish insurgency over immigration restrictions and continued conflict with the Arab community over limit levels. The Haganah joined Irgun and Lehi in an armed struggle against British rule. The Haganah attempted to bring tens of thousands of Jewish refugees and Holocaust survivors to Palestine by ship. Most of the ships were intercepted by
17316-475: The practice of literary criticism. Much of Updike's art criticism appeared in The New York Review of Books , where he often wrote about American art . His art criticism involved an aestheticism like that of his literary criticism. Updike's 2008 Jefferson Lecture , "The Clarity of Things: What's American About American Art?", dealt with the uniqueness of American art from the 18th century to
17464-575: The province of Judea was renamed Syria Palaestina . Jews were expelled from the districts surrounding Jerusalem. Nevertheless, there was a continuous small Jewish presence, and Galilee became its religious center. Early Christianity displaced Roman paganism in the 4th century CE, with Constantine embracing and promoting the Christian religion and Theodosius I making it the state religion . A series of laws were passed that discriminated against Jews and Judaism, and Jews were persecuted by both
17612-494: The real from the fictional in Operation Shylock is not wholly impossible. For example, several minor characters from the novel are actual people including John Demjanjuk , Claire Bloom , and Israeli writer and Roth friend Aharon Appelfeld . The post-operative nervous breakdown mentioned in the prologue and in other books by or about Roth was drawn from Roth's real-life experience of the temporary side-effects of
17760-632: The region in 63 BCE, first taking control of Syria , and then intervening in the Hasmonean civil war . The struggle between pro-Roman and pro- Parthian factions in Judea led to the installation of Herod the Great as a dynastic vassal of Rome . In 6 CE, the area was annexed as the Roman province of Judaea ; tensions with Roman rule led to a series of Jewish–Roman wars , resulting in widespread destruction. The First Jewish–Roman War (66–73 CE) resulted in
17908-469: The remainder of his life. Updike said, "As to critics, it seems to be my fate to disappoint my theological friends by not being Christian enough, while I'm too Christian for Harold Bloom 's blessing. So be it." Later, Updike and his family relocated to Ipswich, Massachusetts . Many commentators, including a columnist in the local Ipswich Chronicle , asserted that the fictional town of Tarbox in Couples
18056-525: The rest of the 1990s and early 2000s publishing novels in a wide range of genres; the work of this period was frequently experimental in nature. These styles included the historical fiction of Memories of the Ford Administration (1992), the magical realism of Brazil (1994), the science fiction of Toward the End of Time (1997), the postmodernism of Gertrude and Claudius (2000), and
18204-646: The rule of various empires from the Romans to the Ottomans . European antisemitism in the late 19th century galvanized Zionism , which sought a Jewish homeland in Palestine and gained British support . After World War I , Britain occupied the region and established Mandatory Palestine in 1920. Increased Jewish immigration in the leadup to the Holocaust and British colonial policy led to intercommunal conflict between Jews and Arabs , which escalated into
18352-614: The stated objectives of destroying Hamas and freeing hostages. The fifth war of the Gaza–Israel conflict since 2008, it has been the deadliest for Palestinians in the entire Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the most significant military engagement in the region since the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Israel is accused of carrying out a genocide against the Palestinian people by experts, governments, United Nations agencies, and non-governmental organisations during its invasion of
18500-460: The story of a fervent young extremist Muslim in New Jersey , garnered media attention but little critical praise. In 2003, Updike published The Early Stories , a large collection of his short fiction spanning the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s. More than 800 pages long, with over one hundred stories, it has been called "a richly episodic and lyrical Bildungsroman ... in which Updike traces
18648-604: The territory was divided between Britain and France under the mandate system , and the British-administered area (including modern Israel) was named Mandatory Palestine . Arab opposition to British rule and Jewish immigration led to the 1920 Palestine riots and the formation of a Jewish militia known as the Haganah as an outgrowth of Hashomer, from which the Irgun and Lehi paramilitaries later split. In 1922,
18796-571: The trajectory from adolescence, college, married life , fatherhood, separation and divorce". It won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 2004. This lengthy volume nevertheless excluded several stories found in his short-story collections of the same period. Updike worked in a wide array of genres, including fiction, poetry (most of it compiled in Collected Poems: 1953–1993 , 1993), essays (collected in nine separate volumes),
18944-717: The vision of the Return in a more active way than most Christians viewed the Second Coming ." The religious Judaic notion of being a nation was distinct from the modern European notion of nationalism. The Jewish population of Palestine from the Ottoman rule to the beginning of the Zionist movement, known as the Old Yishuv , comprised a minority and fluctuated in size. During the 16th century, Jewish communities struck roots in
19092-542: The way power functions in his present-day (the year 1988). A major concern of Roth's fiction since the 1970s has been the relationship between a novelist's life and work. Though this topic is thoroughly explored in Roth's series of Zuckerman novels, Operation Shylock even more radically attacks the distinction between art and life by making a fairly mimetic version of the author the protagonist of an obviously invented (though plausible) story. Despite this effort, separating
19240-569: The writer's equipment, the typewriter eraser, the boxes of clean paper. And I remember the brown envelopes that stories would go off in—and come back in." These early years in Berks County, Pennsylvania , would influence the environment of the Rabbit Angstrom tetralogy , as well as many of his early novels and short stories. Updike graduated from Shillington High School as co- valedictorian and class president in 1950 and received
19388-1049: Was Toni Morrison 's 1987 Beloved .) Reporting upon Roth's reception of the 2011 Man Booker International Prize , critic Jonathan Derbyshire of the New Statesman wrote, "The judging panel make the inevitable reference in their summing-up to Roth's extraordinary fecundity over the past 15 years or so, at a stage in his life when 'most novelists are in decline'. The most notable fruits of Roth's Indian summer, 1995's Sabbath's Theater and American Pastoral , published two years later, are certainly among his most luminous achievements. But two slightly earlier novels stand out for me, both of them hectically metafictional works partly set in Israel: The Counterlife (1986) and Operation Shylock ." After Roth's death, The New York Times asked several prominent writers to name their favorite book by him. Daniel Mendelsohn cast his vote for Operation Shylock , writing: "Here,
19536-554: Was a unified Palestine under Arab rule. In February 1947, the British referred the Palestine issue to the newly formed United Nations . On 15 May 1947, the UN General Assembly resolved that a Special Committee be created "to prepare ... a report on the question of Palestine". The Report of the Committee proposed a plan to replace the British Mandate with "an independent Arab State, an independent Jewish State, and
19684-496: Was adapted as a film and included on Harold Bloom 's list of canonical 20th-century literature (in The Western Canon ). In 2008 Updike published The Widows of Eastwick , a return to the witches in their old age. It was his last published novel. In 1986, he published the unconventional Roger's Version , the second volume of the so-called Scarlet Letter trilogy, about an attempt to prove God's existence using
19832-424: Was also a critic of literature and art , one frequently cited as one of the best American critics of his generation. In the introduction to Picked-Up Pieces, his 1975 collection of prose, he listed his personal rules for literary criticism: To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser. Do not accept for review
19980-428: Was based on Ipswich. Updike denied the suggestion in a letter to the paper. Impressions of Updike's day-to-day life in Ipswich during the 1960s and 1970s are included in a letter to the same paper published soon after Updike's death and written by a friend and contemporary. In Ipswich, Updike wrote Rabbit, Run (1960), on a Guggenheim Fellowship , and The Centaur (1963), two of his most acclaimed and famous works;
20128-436: Was born in Reading, Pennsylvania , the only child of Linda Grace (née Hoyer) and Wesley Russell Updike , and was raised at his childhood home in the nearby small town of Shillington . The family later moved to the unincorporated village of Plowville . His mother's attempts to become a published writer impressed the young Updike. "One of my earliest memories", he later recalled, "is of seeing her at her desk ... I admired
20276-431: Was damaged by the continuation of Israeli settlements and checkpoints , and the deterioration of economic conditions. Israeli public support for the Accords waned after Palestinian suicide attacks . In November 1995, Rabin was assassinated by Yigal Amir , a far-right Jew who opposed the Accords. During Benjamin Netanyahu's premiership at the end of the 1990s, Israel agreed to withdraw from Hebron , though this
20424-519: Was essentially that proposed in the report of 3 September. The Jewish Agency, the recognized representative of the Jewish community, accepted the plan, which assigned 55–56% of Mandatory Palestine to the Jews. At the time, the Jews were about a third of the population and owned around 6–7% of the land. Arabs constituted the majority and owned about 20% of the land, with the remainder held by the Mandate authorities or foreign landowners. The Arab League and Arab Higher Committee of Palestine rejected it on
20572-409: Was established as the first planned Jewish town in 1909. Jewish armed militias emerged during this period, the first being Bar-Giora in 1907. Two years later, the larger Hashomer organization was founded as its replacement. Chaim Weizmann's efforts to garner British support for the Zionist movement eventually secured the Balfour Declaration of 1917, stating Britain's support for the creation of
20720-825: Was in accordance with the One Million Plan . Some immigrants held Zionist beliefs or came for the promise of a better life, while others moved to escape persecution or were expelled from their homes. An influx of Holocaust survivors and Jews from Arab and Muslim countries to Israel during the first three years increased the number of Jews from 700,000 to 1,400,000. By 1958, the population had risen to two million. Between 1948 and 1970, approximately 1,150,000 Jewish refugees relocated to Israel. Some immigrants arrived as refugees and were housed in temporary camps known as ma'abarot ; by 1952, over 200,000 people were living in these tent cities. Jews of European background were often treated more favorably than Jews from Middle Eastern and North African countries—housing units reserved for
20868-406: Was never ratified or implemented, and he signed the Wye River Memorandum , giving greater control to the PNA. Ehud Barak , elected prime minister in 1999, withdrew forces from southern Lebanon and conducted negotiations with PNA Chairman Yasser Arafat and U.S. President Bill Clinton at the 2000 Camp David Summit . Barak offered a plan for the establishment of a Palestinian state , including
21016-414: Was recollected in Knopf's Collected Poems (1993). He wrote that "I began as a writer of light verse , and have tried to carry over into my serious or lyric verse something of the strictness and liveliness of the lesser form." The poet Thomas M. Disch noted that because Updike was such a well-known novelist, his poetry "could be mistaken as a hobby or a foible"; Disch saw Updike's light verse instead as
21164-417: Was serially unfaithful, and eventually left the marriage in 1974 for Martha Ruggles Bernhard . In 1977, Updike and Bernhard married. In 1982, his first wife married an MIT academic. Updike and Bernhard lived for more than 30 years in Beverly Farms , Massachusetts. Updike had three stepsons through Bernhard. He died of lung cancer at a hospice in Danvers, Massachusetts , on January 27, 2009, at age 76. He
21312-491: Was set in the Pennsylvania of his youth; it ended around 1965 with the lyrical Of the Farm . After his early novels, Updike became most famous for his chronicling infidelity, adultery, and marital unrest, especially in suburban America; and for his controversial depiction of the confusion and freedom inherent in this breakdown of social mores. He once wrote that it was "a subject which, if I have not exhausted, has exhausted me". The most prominent of Updike's novels of this vein
21460-571: Was suggested by David Ben-Gurion and passed by a vote of 6–3. In the early weeks after establishment, the government chose the term Israeli to denote a citizen of the Israeli state. The names Land of Israel and Children of Israel have historically been used to refer to the biblical Kingdom of Israel and the entire Jewish people respectively. The name Israel (Hebrew: Yīsrāʾēl ; Septuagint ‹See Tfd› Greek : Ἰσραήλ , Israēl , " El (God) persists/rules", though after Hosea 12:4 often interpreted as "struggle with God") refers to
21608-486: Was suppressed; Muhammad Ali's army retreated and Ottoman rule was restored with British support in 1840. The Tanzimat reforms were implemented across the Ottoman Empire. The first wave of modern Jewish migration to Ottoman-ruled Palestine , known as the First Aliyah , began in 1881, as Jews fled pogroms in Eastern Europe. The 1882 May Laws increased economic discrimination against Jews, and restricted where they could live. In response, political Zionism took form,
21756-415: Was survived by his wife, his four children, three stepsons, his first wife, and seven grandchildren and seven step-grandchildren. Updike published eight volumes of poetry over his career, including his first book The Carpentered Hen (1958), and one of his last, the posthumous Endpoint (2009). The New Yorker published excerpts of Endpoint in its March 16, 2009 issue. Much of Updike's poetical output
21904-484: Was the beginning of his professional writing career. Updike stayed at The New Yorker as a full staff writer for only two years, writing "Talk of the Town" columns and submitting poetry and short stories to the magazine. In New York, Updike wrote the poems and stories that came to fill his early books like The Carpentered Hen (1958) and The Same Door (1959). These works were influenced by Updike's early engagement with The New Yorker . This early work also featured
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