In Philip Roth"s intimate intellectual encounters with an international and diverse cast of writers, they explore the importance of region, politics, and history in their work and trace the imaginative path by which a writer"s highly individualized art is informed by the wider conditions of life.

Milan Kundera and Czechoslovakia, Primo Levi and Auschwitz, Edna O"Brien and Ireland, Aharon Appelfeld and Bukovina, Ivan Klíma and Prague, Isaac Singer and Warsaw, Bruno Schulz and Poland — what is the intricate transaction between the susceptible writer and the provocative time and place? Roth"s questions go to the original conditions that stimulate the narrative impulse, and he puts them to writers who are as attuned to the subtleties of literature as to the influence of the surrounding society.

Also included here are appreciative portraits of two of Roth"s late friends, each transfixed till the end by his artistic vocation — the writer Bernard Malamud and the painter Philip Guston — as well as several cartoons drawn by Guston, a gift to Roth to illustrate his novella THE BREAST and printed here for the first time. SHOP TALK concludes with Roth"s essay "Rereading Saul Bellow," a vivid presentation of Bellow"s achievement and, in the spirit of this collection, very much a colleague"s reading.

者簡介：

菲利普·羅斯（1933—　）　1997年，菲利普·羅斯因《美國牧歌》獲得普利策奬。1998年，他在白宮獲頒美國國傢藝術勛章；2002年，他榮獲美國藝術與文學學院最高奬項小說金奬，該奬曾頒給約翰·多斯·帕索斯、威廉·福剋納及索爾·貝婁等人。他曾兩次獲得美國全國圖書奬、福剋納筆會奬和美國全國書評傢協會奬。

2005年，《反美陰謀》作為“2003—2004年以美國為主題的卓越曆史小說”而獲得美國曆史學傢協會奬，並被《紐約時報書評》、《舊金山紀事報》、《波士頓環球報》、《芝加哥太陽時報》、《洛杉磯時報書評》、《華盛頓郵報圖書世界》、《時代》周刊、《新聞周刊》等眾多報刊提名為年度最佳圖書。在英國，《反美陰謀》一書獲得W.H.史密斯奬年度最佳圖書奬，讓羅斯成為該奬46年曆史上首位兩次問鼎的作傢。

2005年，羅斯也成為第三位在世時作品就由美國文庫齣版綜閤性、定論性版本的作傢。該八捲本文集的最後一捲定於2013年齣版。