And Portnoy aficionados will be delighted to see that liver makes a reappearance. But whereas in Portnoy's Complaint the teenage Alexander Portnoy masturbates into a piece of liver, in Indignation - typically - the emphasis is on its more dangerous qualities: Marcus's mother doesn't hold a piece of liver firmly enough as she's slicing it; the knife slips and she cuts herself.

As Roth has grown older - he's now 75 - this fascination with work has taken on a more manic aspect, rather as though the accumulation of detail can be placed, like so many duckboards, over the abyss below. Like all of his recent novels, Indignation is preoccupied with the imminence, the proximity, of death. Yet for all its morbidity, the book is far from dispiriting. Indeed, it sees Roth showing off his comic flair with rather more gusto than of late.

Roth's own destiny has seen him forever bracketed with Saul Bellow - the two great chroniclers of urban life in contemporary America. Bellow's decline could be dated, roughly speaking, from the moment he started writing short novels instead of long ones. However, there's no sign of any tailing off with Roth. Indignation may not be a major work, but it is richly textured, zips along with immense vigour and packs an ingenious low blow.