The earlier life of Nathan Zuckerman appears in Peter Tarnopol's "Useful Fictions," the first two sections of My Life as a Man (1974). Roth presents Zuckerman's later career in the Zuckerman Bound trilogy, which consists of The Ghost Writer (1979), Zuckerman Unbound (1981), The Anatomy Lesson (1983), and an Epilogue: The Prague Orgy (1985). He also appears in The Facts: A Novelist's Autobiography (1988). There, Roth writes a letter to his alter ego and receives a critique of his book in a letter that concludes the volume. Some mention of married life between Zuckerman and Maria also appears in the letter, and in Deception (1989) Maria reappears as a major character.