Their case was incredibly polarizing during the already politically paranoid Cold War era. The Rosenbergs are firmly enmeshed in the American historical memory and cultural imagination, especially after being put to death via the electric chair. The real Rosenbergs were nothing like the way Anya described them in The Vixen, the Patriot and the Fanatic, but perhaps the mythology around them has prevented us from knowing what they were actually like. In The Vixen, the Patriot and the Fanatic, Junius is relegated to the anti-Semitic trope of the weak, impotent Jewish man, while Esther’s loving relationship with her two children is all but dismissed. In real life, Rosenberg and her husband, Julius (dubbed Junius in Anya’s book), were convicted of spying for the Soviet Union and were executed in 1953. In The Vixen, Simon’s assignment just so happens to be to edit an erotic spy thriller about Ethel Rosenberg (named Esther Rosenstein in Anya’s book), a childhood friend of his mother who’s depicted as a traitorous, evil sexpot whose only aim is to destroy American men with her exotic wiles and heaving bosom. The parts that were the most fun to write are probably the most fun to read.
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