Nathan Zuckerman

Nathan Zuckerman is the protagonist and narrator of the novel. He is an American novelist who travels to Prague, Czechoslovakia, which is under Soviet occupation, in 1976. Zuckerman travels to Prague to retrieve the manuscript of a great, now deceased Yiddish writer. The manuscript remains unpublished. He travels on behalf of the Yiddish author's son, Zdenek Sisovsky, who asks that Zuckerman goes to Prague to retrieve it.

Zuckerman is an American Jew and a famous novelist in the United States. The Czechs he meets in Prague treat him like a celebrity. He witnesses the insanity of the writers and artists he meets in Prague, since everyone is obsessed with sex and the idea of being watched by the police at all times. Zuckerman observes all these instances with casualness and he supplies the right, sarcastic answer for everything. His goal is to secure the manuscript and he is...