Joshua Shapiro [of Joshua Then and Now] is Mordecai Richler's irresistible incarnation of the Wandering Jew, returned to Canada after two decades of scouring the planet for his inheritance, "any inheritance, weightier than the construction of a transcontinental railway, a reputation for honest trading, good skiing conditions." A TV celebrity and sportswriter whose fame inspires envy and anger in many of his overachieving buddies from the shtetl of St. Urbain Street in Montreal, Shapiro is nonetheless up against it. He's in the hospital with multiple fractures, his wonderful goyisheh wife is on the lam, his "homosexual" correspondence has been leaked to the press, and he is being hounded by reporters anxious to show that this media heavy is light in the loafers. Shapiro is a familiar Jewish type, a man in the vanguard of suffering. Oy vay, does he have problems. But give him 435 pages and all will...