Op.Non.Cit - Hardcover

OP. NON. CIT comprises four novellas, each with the theme of the Jew in the non-Jewish world. They move in time through the last four centuries and in space from east to west, and they share Isler's distinctive blend of high comedy and dark tragedy, of grotesquerie, hilarity and sorrow. The title means 'works not cited' and behind each story lies another, one we all know, whether it is THE MERCHANT OF VENICE in the first story (set in a Venice ghetto) or LA BOHEME in the last, set in contemporary Greenwich Village. Brilliantly clever, at once literate and literary, this is Alan Isler's finest book to date.

Alan Isler was born in London in 1934. His first novel, The Prince of West End Avenue, was acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic. In America it won the National Jewish book Award and was one of the five fiction nominees for the 1994 National Book Critics Circle Award. In Britain it won the Jewish Quarterly Fiction Award. His second novel, Kraven Images, was published in 1996. He lives in London.