Jonathan Treitel is more than a writer of promise for the twenty-first century, having already written sophisticated novels and compiled a body of shorter work including stories, radio scripts, and poetry. He is not so much searching for a style as trying out stylistic positions, but in what he has produced there is a consistent concern with language and with the sense of the uncertain ground of reality in modern times. He appears to be finding ways in which his gift for humor and wit can be employed to focus on comedy in the old sense, not the laughable but the panorama of life in which all humans engage.

Jonathan Alexander Treitel was born in London in 1959. He completed his formal education in California, where he earned a Ph.D degree at Stanford University on the philosophy of science. He has lived in San Francisco, Paris, Jerusalem, London...