Ozick, Cynthia, 1928–, American writer, b. New York City, grad. New York Univ. (B.A., 1949), Ohio State Univ. (M.A., 1950). Her fiction, written with high intelligence, elegant incisiveness, and sharp, frequently satiric wit, is mainly concerned with facets of Jewish life and thought including the Holocaust and its legacy, the Jewish presence in contemporary life, and Jewish mysticism and legend. Ozick's novels began with the lengthy Trust (1966) and continued with The Cannibal Galaxy (1983), The Messiah of Stockholm (1987), The Shawl (1989), The Puttermesser Papers (1997), Heir to the Glimmering World (2004), and Foreign Bodies (2010). Her collections of short fiction are The Pagan Rabbi and Other Stories (1971), Bloodshed and Three Novellas (1976), Levitation: Five Fictions (1982), and Dictation: A Quartet (2008). Ozick's literary criticism and other intellectually rigorous essays have been collected in Art and Ardor (1983), Metaphor and Memory (1989), Fame and Folly (1996), Quarrel and Quandary (2000), The Din in the Head (2006), and Critics, Monsters, Fanatics and Other Literary Essays (2016). Early in her career Ozick published poetry, and in her later years she has written plays.
See studies by H. Bloom, ed. (1986), S. Pinsker (1987), J. Lowin (1988), V. E. Kielsky (1989), L. S. Friedman (1991), E. M. Kauvar (1993), S. B. Cohen (1994), V. H. Strandberg (1994), and D. Fargione (2005).
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