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Apr 17, 1928 — —· 98 yrs

FICTION · GENERAL

Cynthia Ozick

Also known as: Cynthia. Ozick, Cynthia ozick

29
BOOKS
4.0
AVG RATING (1)
2
READERS

Cynthia Ozick was born in New York City to Russian-Jewish parents. She received a B.A. from New York University and a M.A. from Ohio State University. She is a 1982 Guggenheim Fellow and received a Mildred and Harold Strauss Living award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. She writes about politics, history, and literary criticism. The Holocaust is a recurring theme, and she often writes about life as a Jewish American.

As we approach the twenty-first century, a remarkable convergence of political and economic institutions has taken place around the world.

— from Trust, 1995

Most acclaimed

#2

Heir to the glimmering world

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"Cynthia Ozick takes us to the outskirts of the Bronx in the 1930s, as New York fills with Europe's ousted dreamers, turned overnight into refugees." "Rose Meadows unknowingly enters this world when she answers an ambiguous want ad for an "assistant" to a Herr Mitwisser, the patriarch of a large, chaotic household. Rosie, orphaned at eighteen, has been living with her distant relative Bertram, who sparks her first erotic desires. But just as he begins to return her affection, his lover, a radical socialist named Ninel (Lenin spelled backward), turns her out." "And so Rosie takes refuge from love among refugees of world upheaval. Cast out from Berlin's elite, the Mitwissers live at the whim of a mysterious benefactor, James A'Bair. Professor Mitwisser is a terrifying figure, obsessed with his arcane research. His distraught wife, Elsa, once a prominent physicist, is becoming unhinged. Their willful sixteen-year-old daughter runs the household: the exquisite, enigmatic Anneliese. Rosie's place here is uncertain, and she finds her fate hanging on the arrival of James. Inspired by the real Christopher Robin, James is the Bear Boy, the son of a famous children's author who recreated James as the fanciful subject of his books. Also a kind of refugee, James runs from his own fame, a boy adored by the world but grown into a bitter man. It is Anneliese's fierce longing that draws James back to this troubled house, and it is Rosie who must help them all resist James's reckless orbit."--BOOK JACKET.

#1

The Best American Short Stories 1997

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#3

The Puttermesser Papers

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From Cynthia Ozick, a masterful modern-day picaresque - the adventures of a female Don Quixote transplanted in Manhattan. Ruth Puttermesser, yearning for a life of the mind (her idol is George Eliot), finds herself mired in the lowest circles of city bureaucracy. Her love life is hopeless. Her fantasies are more influential than wan reality - she takes Hebrew lessons from an uncle who died before she was born; she makes a golem out of the earth of her houseplants. Still, she turns out to be the best mayor New York City has ever elected (with the most unusual campaign manager). Soon enough, though, paradise gained becomes paradise lost, and the impact of getting exactly what you want and then losing it plays itself out in dramatic and surprising fashion.

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