Anti-life
by H
About This Novel
"Counterlife" is Roth's fourth novel with the novelist Nathan Zuckerman as the protagonist, following his "Zuckerman Bound" trilogy. Roth won the National Book Critics Circle Award for the novel and was a finalist for the National Book Award. ? The novel takes the fate of the two Zuckerman brothers, Nathan and Henry, as two main lines. His elder brother Nathan is a well-known American novelist, and his younger brother Henry is a slightly accomplished dentist. The two fell out over Nathan's famous work "Karnofsky," and Henry accused Nathan of irresponsibly exaggerating and distorting his private life. After many years of no contact with each other, Henry walked into Nathan's life again because of Nathan's funeral. On the other hand, in the first-person narrative with Nathan, the host of the funeral becomes Henry, and it is Nathan who attends the funeral. Henry first died in a surgical operation in the United States, and then was resurrected as Hanoch in Israel. The dual narratives of Nathan and Henry do not run parallel to each other, but intersperse, entangle, and even contradict and subvert each other. With the help of postmodern writing techniques in which the protagonist comes back from life and death, "Counter Life" reveals how environment, encounters and a series of related life choices change people's subjective initiative, how they bring people different identities and recognition and interpretation of identities.
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