The Ghost Writer intro­duces Nathan Zuck­er­man in the 1950s, a bud­ding writer infat­u­at­ed with the Great Books, dis­cov­er­ing the con­tra­dic­to­ry claims of lit­er­a­ture and expe­ri­ence while an overnight guest in the seclud­ed New Eng­land farm­house of his idol, E. I. Lonoff.

At Lonof­f’s, Zuck­er­man meets Amy Bel­lette, a haunt­ing young woman of inde­ter­mi­nate for­eign back­ground who turns out to be a for­mer stu­dent of Lonof­f’s and who may also have been his mis­tress. Zuck­er­man, with his active, youth­ful imag­i­na­tion, won­ders if she could be the par­a­dig­mat­ic vic­tim of Nazi per­se­cu­tion. If she were, it might change his life.

The first vol­ume of the tril­o­gy and epi­logue Zuck­er­man Bound, The Ghost Writer is about the ten­sions between lit­er­a­ture and life, artis­tic truth­ful­ness and con­ven­tion­al decen­cy — and about those implaca­ble prac­ti­tion­ers who live with the con­se­quences of sac­ri­fic­ing one for the other.