After decade or two of metaphysical tricks and postmodern identity crises, Philip Roth has finally gotten back around to what he does best: offending people.

Roth’s most intriguing books, after all, have been those in which he’s deliberately crossed the line over various sexual and ethnic taboos. Goodbye, Columbus angered Jews for its unflattering portrait of middle-class Jewish life; My Life As a Man steamed up feminists by portraying an utterly manipulative and conniving wife; and, of course, Portnoy’s Complaint raised eyebrows everywhere with its pure, taboo-shattering sexual energy.

Stirring outrage is exactly what Roth’s latest book, Sabbath’s Theater, his twenty-first, is designed to do. The novel’s protagonist, an aging puppeteer and lecher named Mickey Sabbath, gives umbrage to any number of readers by such grotesque activities as urinating on his ex-lover’s grave, ransacking a friend’s daughter’s underwear drawer for fantasy material, and mocking his wife’s alcoholic recovery programs. Sabbath’s Theater will be fascinating reading for anyone who can put up Philip Roth and his anti-political correctness agenda.

Sabbath’s art (before the onset of arthritis left him unemployed) was obscene puppet theater. The act which both made his name and got him arrested was a Shakespeare-type soliloquy performed by his middle finger — while his other fingers stealthily undressed whatever female audience member happened to be watching at the time. This and other half-unwilling acts of seduction are what Sabbath considers his “art,” but to the prude guardians of conventional morality it’s nothing but sexual harassment.

But more than art, to Sabbath lechery is the entire summation of his existence, the whole purpose of his tenure here on earth. Even now at sixty-four he regrets not a single one of his numerous infidelities. As a matter of fact, it’s the death of his mistress of fifteen years that’s causing him so much grief — as well as the fact that at his age it’s tough to find a replacement so late in the game.

Refreshing as it is to see Philip Roth move away from the sometimes tedious head games he played in the Zuckerman Trilogy and Operation Shylock (wherein he ludicrously claimed to have been a spy for the Mossad), Sabbath’s Theater doesn’t feel entirely genuine. Much like the film producers that parade their NC-17 ratings on television for hype value, so too Roth needs to exercise more subtlety as he pulls our strings.

Jerusalem is the land of contradictions. It’s the city of the hunted and oppressed that has inspired countless acts of violence and oppression. The city that several of the world’s largest and most conflicting religions claim as holy ground. The city that’s at the heart of the nation of paradox itself, Israel.

It’s also the city chosen as the setting of Philip Roth’s latest exercise in self-analysis, Operation Shylock. The novel asks why it is that American Jews — the so-called “normalized” Jews like Roth — can both revere and detest Israel at the same time. Is there a real truth about the so-called Holy Land and the people that support it, or is truth simply in the eye of the beholder?

Operation Shylock provides no easy answers. The book itself, like several of Roth’s novels, walks the tightrope between fact and fiction. It’s written in first-person confessional style and built on the foundation of factual events; yet a disclaimer at the book’s end insists that Shylock is pure invention. To confuse matters even more, Roth has claimed in public that he really did undergo a top-secret spy mission for the Israelis, as the book states.

Even if you take Roth’s claims for veracity as another one of his two-bit metaphysical pretensions, like I did, the novel does have an intriguing plot. The author, recovering from a mental breakdown caused by the dangerous painkiller Halcion, travels to Israel to interview colleague Aharon Appelfeld for The New York Times Review of Books. He discovers, however, that another Philip Roth has gotten there before him and has been preaching anti-Israeli doctrine in his name.

According to the other Roth, the Jews must abandon the concept of Zionism and return to their homelands in Europe before Israel disgraces the entire religion. Roth grows upset that his name is being used for political purposes — especially political purposes with which he doesn’t agree — and goes out to confront his doppleganger. He discovers that the “fake” Philip Roth is virtually indistinguishable from the “real” Philip Roth, and that people are buying the ruse. The imposter refuses to back down from his impersonation, claiming to be a martyr for the cause of Jewish Diasporism.

The views espoused by “Philip Roth” quickly come to the attention of both Israeli and Palestinian intelligence, and soon the author can no longer distinguish reality from subterfuge. As a high-profile Jewish figure, Roth begins to suspect that he is being ensnared by both Israelis and Palestinians into working for their causes. Innocent encounters begin to seem like carefully crafted plots designed to sway his opinion.

To top things off, this all occurs at a time when tensions couldn’t be greater between Arab and Jew. Israel is involved in the trial of John Demjanjuk, a Cleveland auto worker accused of being the notorious Nazi torturer Ivan the Terrible. The legitimacy of Jewish and Palestinian claims about Israel rests on whether Demjanjuk is really a monster finally being brought to justice or a poor immigrant being subjected to a sham trial.

For Roth, the final truth to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that there isn’t any. Israel is both a paradise for the Jews and a nightmare for the Palestinians; Demjanjuk is both a model American citizen and a Nazi butcher; and the Israeli intelligence agency the Mossad is both manipulative and deceitful as well as a noble institution worthy of working for. If there is any simpler truth, the author concludes, it cannot be deduced from the evidence that is now before us.

Philip Roth does discover one ultimate truth about himself and the Jewish people in Operation Shylock. It’s a statement made by the late Bernard Malamud: “If you ever forget you’re a Jew, a gentile will remind you.” In other words, Jews will always be Jews before they are anything else — especially in Israel.