One of America"s foremost novelists and critics, Cynthia Ozick has
won praise and provoked debate for taking on challenging literary,
historical, and moral issues. Her new collection of spirited essays focuses
on the essential joys of great literature, with particular emphasis on the
novel. With razor-sharp wit and an inspiring joie de vivre, she investigates
unexpected byways in the works of Leo Tolstoy, Saul Bellow, Helen
Keller, Isaac Babel, Sylvia Plath, Susan Sontag, and more. In a posthumous
and hilariously harassing "(Unfortunate) Interview with Henry
James," Ozick"s hero is shocked by a lady reporter. In "Highbrow Blues"
and in reflections on her own early fiction, she writes intimately of "the
din in our heads, that relentless inner hum," and the curative power of
literary imagination. The Din in the Head is sure to please fans, win new
readers, and excite critical controversy and acclaim.