Cynthia Ozick
Cynthia Ozick (born 1928 in New York City) is a towering figure in Jewish‑American literature, celebrated for her intellectually fierce novels, short stories, and essays that probe identity, memory, morality, and the burdens of history; raised in the Bronx by Russian Jewish immigrants and shaped by her early devotion to Henry James, she built a seven‑decade career marked by works such as The Pagan Rabbi, The Shawl, The Puttermesser Papers, and Heir to the Glimmering World, earning major literary honors while becoming one of the most distinctive moral and aesthetic voices in American letters.
Antiquities
Cynthia Ozick
Dictation
Cynthia Ozick
A witty 2008 historical novella and collection quartet that imagines a fateful 1910 meeting in London between the real-life secretaries of literary giants Henry James and Joseph Conrad.
Foreign Bodies
Cynthia Ozick
A deliberate reimagining of Henry James's The Ambassadors, this novel follows a fierce American schoolteacher sent to Paris in 1952 to retrieve her estranged, rebellious nephew.
Heir to the Glimmering World
Cynthia Ozick
Set in 1930s New York, a young woman becomes a companion to a chaotic family of German-Jewish refugees centered around an eccentric, deeply unhinged scholar of Karaism.
The Messiah of Stockholm
Cynthia Ozick
A Swedish book reviewer convinces himself that he is the son of the murdered Polish writer Bruno Schulz and sets out to find Schulz's lost, legendary manuscript.
The Puttermesser Papers
Cynthia Ozick
This episodic, satirical novel chronicles the eccentric life of Ruth Puttermesser, a New York lawyer who creates a female golem to help her clean up the city as mayor.
The Shawl
Cynthia Ozick
Expanding on her famous short story, this brief, harrowing novel follows a mother surviving a Nazi concentration camp and grappling with the profound, lifelong trauma of losing her infant daughter.
Trust
Cynthia Ozick
A young woman searches for her identity while navigating the complex histories, shifting loyalties, and moral ambiguities of her wealthy, eccentric family.