Eleven essays on literature (poetry and prose fiction), versification, and language, including analyses of Shakespeare's Sonnets and Dostoevsky's novels.

In My Wife the Metaphysician, or Lady Murasaki's Revenge, Michael Shapiro devises a storied diary that views the world through the eyes of an inimitable woman whose being and essence are determined by her superlative and penetrating intellect. Inspired by the great Japanese literature by upper-class women writers of the mid-Heian period, eighty-four masterfully woven sections alternate prose, poetry, social commentary and haiku-like vignettes to tell a fascinating tale of betrayal, revenge and undying love. Cruelly and unjustly exiled, Lady Murasaki, accompanied by her consort, Prince Towa no...

A fusion of memoir, family chronicle, and author's commentary that provides a fascinating view into the lives and minds of two passionate scholars, and the rarefied and often treacherous universe in which they lived. Told with conviction and wry humor, Palimpsest of Consciousness traces the author's life from his beginnings as a stateless Russian child in pre-World War II Japan through his eventual journey to the United States, his meeting and marriage to the Dante scholar, Marianne Shapiro, and their life together. Along the way, we glimpse an extraordinary world, a place where classical...