His novels include:
- The Bicycle Rider (1972)
- Diary of a Dummy (1973)
- All Good Things (1978)
- The Days of Awe (1980)
- The Magic Circle (1982)
- Kleinzeit (1984)
- The Last Dream Walker (1987)
- The Book of Jacob (1992)
- The Rabbi and the Nuns (1995)
- The Rabbi's Wife (1998)
- The Rabbi and the Hit Man (2000)
- The Rabbi and the Professor (2002)
His short-story collections include:
- People at Work (1974)
- Dreams of Love and Death (1979)
- The Last Collected Stories of Isaac Babel (1983)
- I Could Tell You Stories: Isaac Babel's Odessa Tales Retranslated (1985)
- The Man Who Sold His House for Love and Other Stories (1991)
- The Short Life of Sophie Scholl (1994)
- After the Rain: Stories (2008)
His works of nonfiction include:
- The Art of Fiction (1989)
- The History of Jewish Literature (1997)
- Jewish American Literature: A Norton Anthology (2001)
- The American Novel: A History (2005)
- Great American Short Stories: A Norton Anthology (2008)