The Prague Orgy

'Scabrous, gutsy, scathing...[a] fitting capstone to Roth's Zuckerman trilogy' - The Times

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning commentator on twentieth-century America, a journey into the very different world beyond the iron curtain.

It’s the mid-1970s, and American novelist Nathan Zuckerman’s search for the unpublished manuscript of a martyred Yiddish writer takes him to Soviet-occupied Prague. He finds a nation quite unlike his own, straightjacketed by totalitarian Communism and institutionalised oppression, and a community of subjugated writers. Through a series of bizarre and poignant adventures, he discovers in them appealingly perverse kind of heroism.

Told as entries in Zuckerman’s journal during his sojourn among these outcast artists, The Prague Orgy completes Roth’s intricately designed magnum opus on the unforeseen consequences of art.