Zublinka Among Women

"Loaded with wit, bristling irony, draped in erudition and studded with metaphysics": so wrote The New York Times Book Review about Robert Wexelblatt's work. Now comes a novel of equal intelligence. Zublinka is a beloved friend, author, and philosopher who, at the age of seventy, lives a rich and varied life of the mind and spirit. Actually, he lives several lives, writing poems and stories under pseudonyms, two of them female. He is also engaged by the lives of others. His dear friend Julia is having some marital difficulties that distress him. Julia's daughter, whom he calls George, adores him, and he writes stories for her, one under the pseudonym, Don Corleone, about "Finbad the Failer." A feminst philosopher condemns and flirts with him. But the story that begins to emerge from the ordinary chronicle of Zublinka's life and mind is far different from that of an academic. Once as a teacher in a country behind the Iron Curtain, Zublinka claimed responsibility for a subversive pamphlet he did not write-and it led to his fleeing to the West. This past continues to weigh on Zublinka, who not only left behind the life he knew but two women he loved-and still loves. He returns to that country after the fall of communist rule and discovers the shocking truth behind his memories. This warm and witty novel of ideas shows that goodness is possible-and in Zublinka palpable-but that goodness is seldom unalloyed. As Zublinka and we learn in the course of this richly rewarding story, the discovery of truth and one's self is the work of a lifetime. Wisdom is possible and hard won. Robert Wexelblatt is Professor of Humanities at Boston University's College of General Studies. He is the author of two story collections, Life in the Temperate Zone and The Decline of Our Neighborhood, and contributor to dozens of literary journals.