FOREIGN BODIES

New York City, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing, 2010. First Edition. First Printing.. Hardcover. Fine/Fine Dust Jacket.. New York City, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing, 2010. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. First Edition/First Printing. 255 pages. The author's sixth novel. Cynthia Ozick's finest achievement. The First Hardcover Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only. The First Edition is now scarce. Presents Cynthia Ozick's "Foreign Bodies". Her homage, in the form of a brilliant "remake" of Henry James' "The Ambassadors", the American novel about Americans in flight from America (to, where else, Europe) . Accordingly, her novel opens with an epigraph from "The Ambassadors" (of the latter's most celebrated line) . "Her vision of Europe and its tragic history is profound. Lili is a creation of stunning depth. It is not Jamesian, it is Ozickian" (The Boston Globe) . A cult writer once upon a time, Cynthia Ozick is now firmly established as one of our finest writers. It took a very long time for the reading public as well as the critics to realize her greatness. By her own admission, it was a struggle to achieve the recognition she deserved and the belated fame is more "folly" than anything else, as one of her collections aver. She is writing in three literary traditions simultaneously, all of them at the most profound level imaginable: The ancient Jewish, the modern European, and the Jamesian American. Hence, the dazzling allusiveness, poignant beauty, and sheer intensity of her work. Her prose style - imbricated, brachiate, and filigreed, to borrow three of her own favorite words - is a paradox: The rush of metaphors arrives at and realizes a work of luminous beauty. An absolute "must-have" title for Cynthia Ozick collectors. This copy is very prominently, neatly, and beautifully signed, placed, and dated (on the day of publication) in black ink-pen on the title page by the author: "Cynthia Ozick November 2, 2010, Queens College". It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. Ozick made a rare appearance at Queens College, City University of New York, in one of a handful of appearances to launch her book. This title is a great book. As far as we know, this is the only such signed, placed, and publication-day dated copy of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: Copies available online have serious flaws, are subsequent printings, or are remainder-marked. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A rare signed copy thus. Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1996 for "Fame & Folly". Finalist for the National Book Award in 1997 for "The Puttermesser Papers". Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2001 for "Quarrel & Quandary". Recipient of the Lannan Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000. One of the greatest writers of our time. A fine collectible copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER CYNTHIA OZICK TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 0547435576.