The Puttermesser Papers - (Vintage International) by Cynthia Ozick (Paperback)

About the Book

This literary tour de force relates the life and times of one of Ozick's most compelling fictional creations. Ruth Puttermesser lives in New York. Her learning is monumental; her love life is minimal; and her most idle fantasies have a disconcerting tendency to burst forth into the real world.

Book Synopsis

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST - The Puttermesser Papers follows Ruth Puttermesser, a highly learned woman living in New York City, who creates a female golem to fulfill her yearning for a daughter and becomes mayor, only to face the unintended consequences of her fantasies.

"A crazy delight." -The New York Time Book Review

Ruth Puttermesser lives in New York City. Her learning is monumental. Her love life is minimal (she prefers pouring through Plato to romping with married Morris Rappoport). And her fantasies have a disconcerting tendency to come true - with disastrous consequences for what we laughably call "reality."

Puttermesser yearns for a daughter and promptly creates one, unassisted, in the form of the first recorded female golem. Laboring in the dusty crevices of the civil service, she dreams of reforming the city - and manages to get herself elected mayor. Puttermesser contemplates the afterlife and is hurtled into it headlong, only to discover that a paradise found is also paradise lost. Overflowing with ideas, lambent with wit, The Puttermesser Papers is a tour de force by one of our most visionary novelists.

"The finest achievement of Ozick's career... It has all the buoyant integrity of a Chagall painting." -San Francisco Chronicle

"Fanciful, poignant... so intelligent, so finely expressed that, like its main character, it remains endearing, edifying, a spark of light in the gloom." -The New York Times

About the Author

Cynthia Ozick, a recipient of a Lannan Award for fiction and a National Book Critics Circle winner for essays, is the author of Trust, The Messiah of Stockholm, The Shawl, and The Puttermesser Papers. She lives in New York.