In a volume of his essays, Mordecai Richler once quoted with relish a question he was asked after lecturing to a Jewish audience in his native Canada: "Why is it that everybody loved Sholem Aleichem, but we all hate you?" He went on to suggest that his writing infuriates not only Jews but Canadians of all races and creeds because he writes with "a certain skepticism, a tendency to deflate," exactly what's needed, he felt, to discipline those given to anxious special pleading.

Another explanation would be that Mordecai Richler loves to be hated, that he's a temperamentally ill-natured writer whose art, as essayist or novelist, consists of being as offensive as possible to everyone who comes his way. In this view, he was doubly lucky in his birth, having been given both Canadians and Jews, with their richly varied sensitivities, to push around.

Mr. Richler's new novel...