One of the most celebrated and controversial novelists of the past two decades, E. L. Doctorow has an uncanny ability to reach both the general audience (The Book of Daniel , Welcome to Hard Times, and Ragtime have been made into movies) and the literary scholar, with works that challenge and expand accepted definitions of the art of the novel. He has distinguished himself among American-Jewish writers by the diversity of his work: an allegorical Western, a science-fiction satire, three novels (one with a large component of poetry), and a play. Doctorow is discussed primarily as an innovator in narrative technique. Yet he is also a distinctly Jewish writer, his replication of characters and events throughout his work reflecting his concern for the persistence of moral crises in history and calling into question modern responses to the problems of evil and individual responsibility.

Born in New York City on...