Four stories of comedy, deception, and revenge (including one previously unpublished) showcases heroes who suffer from willful self-deceit. These not-so-innocents proceed from self-deception to deceiving others, who do not take it lightly. The novella "Dictation" imagines a fateful meeting between the secretaries to Henry James and Joseph Conrad at the peak of their fame. Timid Miss Hallowes, who types for Conrad, comes under the influence of James's Miss Bosanquet, high-spirited, flirtatious, and scheming. In a masterstroke of genius, Ozick hatches a plot between them to insert themselves into posterity.--From publisher description.
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.
