John Updike

In this, the final volume in John Updike’s mock-heroic trilogy about the Jewish American writer Henry Bech, our hero is older but scarcely wiser. Now in his seventies, he remains competitive, lecherous, and self-absorbed, lost in a brave new literary world where his books are hyped by Swiss-owned conglomerates, …

Brazil is a 1994 novel by the American author John Updike. It contains many elements of magical realism. It is a retelling of the ancient tale of Tristan and Isolde, the subject of many works in opera and ballet. Tristão Raposo, a nineteen-year-old black child of the Rio slums, spies Isabel Leme, an eighteen-year-old …

Toward the end of the Vietnam era, in a snug little Rhode Island seacoast town, wonderful powers have descended upon Alexandra, Jane, and Sukie, bewitching divorcées with sudden access to all that is female, fecund, and mysterious. Alexandra, a sculptor, summons thunderstorms; Jane, a cellist, floats on the air; and …