The devastating story of a relationship between a professor and a student, brought to NYRB Classics by Philip Roth, who will provide an introduction for our edition.
Richard Stern (1928-2013) was the author of more than twenty books of fiction and nonfiction, including short stories, essays, and novels. Stern taught literature and creative writing at the University of Chicago from 1955 until retiring in 2001. Philip Roth is the author of thirty-one books, including the Pulitzer Prize winner American Pastoral.
“As if Chekhov had written Lolita. . . . I would contend that in
its own felicitous small-scale way, Other Men’s Daughters is to . .
. the sixties what The Great Gatsby was to the twenties, The Grapes
of Wrath to the thirties, and Rabbit Is Rich to the seventies: a
microscope exactly focused on a definitive specimen of what was
once the present American moment.” —Philip Roth, from the
Introduction
“A novel so good it would have been one of the most valid
contenders for the Great American Novel of the decade. It may have
achieved in a sane, civilized, academic and romantic way what its
showier contemporaries miss by a mile.”
—Ann Rosenberg, The Philadelphia Inquirer
“It is a pleasure to find a novel written with such intelligence
and feeling, a novel that judges none of its people but holds them
up to calm and affectionate scrutiny. Other Men’s Daughters . . .
is ‘relevant’—but its real subject is in the disruptions and
exaltation of the human heart.”
—Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Book World
“Richard Stern’s style is the mark of an exceptional and delicate
attention. Other Men’s Daughters is...an impressive pleas for the
private life as a continuing subject for serious fiction...there is
urgency and power in Stern’s treatment of his profound theme: the
necessary end of particular seasons in our lives, the pain and
confusion and exhilaration of leaving safe old places when they
have become truly uninhabitable.” —Michael Wood, The New York
Review of Books
“This is the best novel about divorce and the anguish of a lost
family that I have ever read.” —Wendy Doniger, Mircea Eliade
Distinguished Service Professor of History of Religions, at the
University of Chicago
“A flower-fresh, moon-bright novel...the author being one of those
who can convey all of Eros in a snip of dialogue, a few
sentences.” —Cosmopolitan
“No novelist could improve upon Richard Stern’s inventory of what
Merriwether has to lose...an attractive book and occasionally and
extraordinarily touching one.” —Time
“I think Other Men’s Daughters is an important book, one of the few
that will be read later. It is brilliantly written, a true novel of
manners, sharply observant of surfaces, and, finally, profound.”
—Herbert Wilner
“Stern’s accomplishment (here, as in all his work) is to locate
precisely the comedy and the pains of a particularly contemporary
phenomenon without exaggeration, animus, or operatic ideology....
In all, it is as if Chekhov had written Lolita.... I would hold
that in its own felicitous way, Other Men’s Daughters is to the
sixties what The Great Gatsby was to the twenties, The Grapes of
Wrath to the thirties, and Rabbit Is Rich to the eighties: a
microscope exactly focused upon a thinly sliced specimen of what
was once the present moment.” —Philip Roth
“The novel’s world rings true...we respond to the honesty of
Stern’s vision.” —Chicago Daily News
“For years I have admired the elegant fiction of Richard Stern for
its impeccable language, its gracious erudition, and, above all,
it’s brilliant wit. In Other Men’s Daughters, to me his most moving
novel, these qualities serve the cause of mercy.” —Thomas Berger
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