Operation Shylock: A Confession

Operation Shylock: A Confession (1993) is a loosely autobiographical work of post-modern fiction by American author Philip Roth. Its protagonist is a fictionalized version of the author himself who travels to Israel against the backdrop of the trial of accused war criminal John Demjanjuk. While the book is classified as fiction, Roth later insisted that everything in the book is true and that he only designated the book as fiction at the urging of an operative with Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency. The absurdity of the book's narrative, however, raises serious questions about Roth's claims of veracity. The book takes its name from the character of Shylock in William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. Shylock is a Jewish moneylender who seeks revenge against his Christian rival.

In 1986, Philip Roth recovers from a psychotic episode caused by the post-operative drug Halcion. Halcion is a brand name for the sedative Triazolam, which Roth was once prescribed in real life. The drug was later banned in a number of countries due to a high risk of "psychiatric disturbance." Roth learns there is a man in Israel using his name to spread the philosophy of "Diasporism," a sort of reverse-Zionism that advocates for the return of Israelis to the European nations from where they emigrated. Upon hearing this, Roth wonders at first if he is still in the midst of a drug-induced psychotic break. Meanwhile, Roth is already scheduled to travel to Israel to conduct an interview with the real-life Israeli novelist and Holocaust survivor Aharon Appelfeld.

Eager to confront the imposter, Roth flies to Israel as scheduled. When he arrives, the highly-publicized trial of another real-life figure, Ivan "John" Demjanjuk, is underway. Demjanjuk, a Ukrainian who served in the Soviet Red Army during World War II, was captured by German Axis forces in 1941 and sent to a concentration camp for Soviet prisoners of war. There, he volunteered to become a Trawniki, a non-German collaborator who served as a concentration camp guard. After the war, Demjanjuk lived as a U.S. citizen until 1986, when he was extradited to Israel to stand trial for war crimes committed as a concentration camp guard. Eleven Holocaust survivors identified him as "Ivan the Terrible," a notoriously savage guard at the Treblinka extermination camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. Demjanjuk was found guilty and sentenced to death at the end of the trial, but Israel's Supreme Court overturned the verdict in 1993—the year Operation Shylock: A Confession was published—after it was revealed that "Ivan the Terrible" was, in fact, a man named Ivan Marchenko who was almost a decade older than Demjanjuk. Demjanjuk, however, was later tried and convicted in Germany for war crimes committed as a guard at the Sobibor extermination camp.



Once in Israel, Roth flakes on his assignment to interview Appelfeld to pursue the imposter, who it turns out also resembles Roth physically, thus making him a doppelganger. Throughout the novel, Roth refers to the doppelganger as Moishe Pipik, which means "Moses Bellybutton" in Yiddish. He catches up with Pipik at the Demjanjuk trial, where the two talk and Roth tries to ascertain his rival's motivations. Meanwhile, Roth spends time with his old college friend George Ziad, who is adamantly pro-Arab when it comes to Israeli tensions in the Middle East. For a time, Roth convinces Ziad that he and Pipik are the same person. Roth appears to take as much relish in impersonating Pipik as Pipik does in impersonating Roth. Roth's compulsion to imitate Pipik worsens after he meets Pipik's girlfriend, an irresistibly beautiful woman named Jinx.

Through Jinx, Roth learns more about Pipik's identity and activities. For example, Pipik has started a group called Anti-Semites Anonymous, a support group designed to correct Anti-Semitism using a Twelve-Step Program inspired by Alcoholics Anonymous. Pipik is also a former private detective who has cancer and wears a penile implant to better satisfy his girlfriend.

By the end of the novel, Roth is impersonating Pipik as a part of Operation Shylock, an effort conducted by Mossad to root out American Jews who provide secret financial backing to the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Roth is recruited by Smilesburger, a Mossad agent who hopes to use Diasporism as a front for Roth's espionage work. The character of Shylock hangs heavily over the proceedings. One character, David Supposnik, a rare books dealer, invokes Shylock in describing Israel's thirst for vengeance in the Demjanjuk trial. He calls Shylock "the savage, repellent, and villainous Jew, deformed by hatred and revenge, entered as our doppelgänger into the consciousness of the enlightened West."



While Operation Shylock: A Confession received mixed reviews on publication, its reputation as a bold work of post-modern fiction has grown in recent years.