Shop Talk

Shop Talk: A Writer and His Colleagues and Their Work is a collection of previously published interviews with important 20th-century writers by novelist Philip Roth. Among the writers interviewed are Primo Levi, Aharon Appelfeld, Ivan Klima, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Milan Kundera, and Edna O'Brien. In addition, the book contains a discussion with Mary McCarthy about Roth's novel The Counterlife and a New Yorker essay on Saul Bellow. Roth's trip to Israel to interview Appelfeld inspired his novel Operation Shylock.

Table of contents

 * Conversation in New York with Isaac Bashevis Singer about Bruno Schulz, from The New York Times Book Review, 1976
 * Conversation in London and Connecticut with Milan Kundera, from The New York Times Book Review, 1980
 * Conversation in London with Edna O'Brien, from The New York Times Book Review, 1984
 * Pictures of Malamud, from The New York Times Book Review, 1986
 * A Man Saved by His Skills. Conversation in Turin with Primo Levi, from The New York Times Book Review, 12 ottobre 1986
 * Conversation in Jerusalem with Aharon Appelfeld, from The New York Times Book Review, 1988
 * Pictures of Guston, from Vanity Fair, 1989
 * Conversation in Prague with Ivan Klíma, from The New York Review of Books, 1990
 * An Exchange with Mary McCarthy, from The New Yorker, 1998
 * Rereading Saul Bellow, from The New Yorker, 2000