At forty, the writer Nathan Zuckerman comes down with a mysterious affliction-pure
pain, beginning in his neck and shoulders, invading his torso, and taking possession
of his spirit. Zuckerman, whose work was his life, is unable to write a line. Now
his work is trekking from one doctor to another, but none can find a cause for the
pain and nobody can assuage it. Zuckerman himself wonders if the pain can have been
caused by his own books. And while he is wondering, his dependence on painkillers
grows into an addiction to vodka, marijuana, and Percodan.

The Anatomy Lesson is
a great comedy of illness written in what the English critic Hermione Lee has described
as a manner at once … brash and thoughtful … lyrical and wry, which projects through
comic expostulations and confessions…a knowing, humane authority. The third volume
of the trilogy and epilogue Zuckerman Bound, The Anatomy Lesson provides some of
the funniest scenes in all of Roth’s fiction as well as some of the fiercest.