biblio-excerptise:   a book unexamined is not worth having

The Breast

Philip Roth

Roth, Philip;

The Breast

Penguin Books, 1985, 96 pages

ISBN 0140076794, 9780140076790

topics: |  fiction | usa | science-fiction


"I am a breast." opens chapter 2, after the opening chapter develops the
symptoms of the protagonists discomfort with a discolouration and a tingling
sensation in his penis.  He then becomes a breast, living in a hammock, pink
nipple at one end, and the rounded, bellied bottom at the other.  He can't
see, but he can hear.  Old academic colleagues laugh upon seeing him in
this state. He takes comfort in Olivier's Hamlet.  Eventually his life
as a breast seems to return to some semblance of Kafkaesque normalcy. - AM


amitabha mukerjee (mukerjee [at] gmail.com) 17 Feb 2009