the last book I ever read (The Prague Orgy by Philip Roth, excerpt one)

from The Prague Orgy by Philip Roth:

“And your mother?”

“My mother hid on a farm. There I was born, two months later. Neither of us looks like my father. Neither did my brother, but his short life was just bad luck. We two survived.”

“And why did your father, with an Aryan wife, write stories in Yiddish? Why not in Czech? He must have spoken Czech to the students at the high school.”

“Czech was for Czechs to write. He married my mother, but he never though he was a real Czech. A Jew who marries a Jew is able at home to forget he’s a Jew. A Jew who marries an Aryan like my mother has her face there always to remind him.”