Roth’s fiction is, for the most part, set in America, in the years following World War II. None of his works are directly situated during the Holocaust, but many of his works are gounded in allusions to that tragedy. This chapter will situate a discussion of those allusions within a larger discussion of the problematic ways in which the Holocaust has in large part come to define Jewish identity, a subject taken up by Roth in works like Portnoy’s Complaint and The Ghost Writer. There, Roth pushes back on associations between Jewishnesss and victimization, but also acknowledges the necessity of contending with the Holocaust as an integral part of collective Jewish identity, thus opening up a conversation continued in more recent works like Nathan Englander’s “What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank.”

In a continuing pattern, wherein Roth’s fiction often reflects (but exaggerates and alters) elements of the author’s own life, his characters also move with him – literally. As Roth has aged, he has retreated more to his home in the Berkshires, so too have Roth’s protagonists become more situated in this area. Nathan Zuckerman, in particular, is attached to this area: as a young man, he visits E.I. Lonoff here in The Ghost Writer, and takes up residence here in Roth’s later work. This chapter will address the importance of this location in Roth’s own life, helping readers interpret its symbolic role in his fiction.