Bernard Berkman is an uncertain egotist. The author of several novels that beguiled the literati once upon a time, he now has no agent--so he feels he has to promote himself, even to his own family. (He refers to Kafka as "one of my predecessors.") The rest of his life is getting away from him too. His tennis game isn't what it used to be. His wife, restless in his shadow, has turned to writing and got a story in the New Yorker. She has also called off their marriage, leaving their two sons shuffling back and forth between alternate parents....
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