The Vixen: A Novel

In the novel "The Vixen," a young man named Simon Putnam is tasked with editing a steamy bodice-ripper based on the recent trial and execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. He must confront the true cost of entering the glamorous world of 1950s New York publishing and his own secret connection to the Rosenbergs. The book explores themes of ambition, conscience, social mobility, cultural assimilation, love, family, art, and loss, and offers an illuminating reflection on the slippery nature of truth in America.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 336 pages
Publication date: 04 August 2022
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Inc

"No one states problems more correctly, more astutely, more amusingly, and more uncomfortably than Francine Prose. . . . The gift of her work to a reader is to create for us what she creates for her protagonist: the subtle unfolding, the moment-by-moment process of discovery as we read and change, from not knowing and even not wanting to know or care, to seeing what we had not seen and finding our way to the light of the ending." - Amy Bloom, New York Times Book Review

Depending on the light, it's either a very funny, serious story, or a very serious, funny story. But no matter how you turn it, The Vixen offers an illuminating reflection on the slippery nature of truth in America, then and now.

Critically acclaimed, bestselling author Francine Prose returns with a dazzling new novel set in the glamorous world of 1950s New York publishing, the story of a young man tasked with editing a steamy bodice-ripper based on the recent trial and execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg—an assignment that will reveal the true cost of entering that seductive, dangerous new world.

It's 1953, and Simon Putnam, a recent Harvard graduate newly hired by a distinguished New York publishing firm, has entered a glittering world of three-martini lunches, exclusive literary parties, and old-money aristocrats in exquisitely tailored suits, a far cry from his loving, middle-class Jewish family in Coney Island.

But Simon's first assignment—editing The Vixen, the Patriot and the Fanatic, a lurid bodice-ripper improbably based on the recent trial and execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, a potboiler intended to shore up the firm's failing finances—makes him question the cost of admission. .

Weight: 252g
Dimension: 135 x 203 x 27 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780063012158