num_pages: 371
description: The Counterlife is about people enacting their dreams of renewal and escape, some of them going so far as to risk their lives to alter seemingly irreversible destinies. Wherever they may find themselves, the characters of The Counterlife are tempted unceasingly by the prospect of an alternative existence that can reverse their fate.Illuminating these lives in transition and guiding us through the book's evocative landscapes, familiar and foreign, is the miind of the novelist Nathan Zuckerman. His is the skeptical, enveloping intelligence that calculates the price that's paid in the struggle to change personal fortune and reshape history, whether in a dentist's office in suburban New Jersey, or in a tradition-bound English Village in Gloucestershire, or in a church in London's West End, or in a tiny desert settlement in Israel's occupied West Bank.
language: English
title: The Counterlife
titlecomplete: The Counterlife
characters: Nathan Zuckerman
genres: 20th Century, Literature, American, Literary Fiction, Novels, Religion, Roman, Jewish, Fiction, Contemporary
ratings_count: 5011
places: West Bank
series: Complete Nathan Zuckerman
awards: awardedAt: 536486400000
name: National Book Critics Circle Award
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 536486400000
name: National Book Award Finalist
category: Fiction
publisher: Penguin Books