Walter Abish, a widely admired if not widely read American author whose early life consisted of hasty escapes from hostile forces in Nazi-era Austria and revolutionary China, died on May 28 in Manhattan. He was 90.

“Though he has published relatively late and little,” John Updike wrote in a review of Mr. Abish’s

memoir, Double Vision: A Self-Portrait, in The New Yorker in 2004, he “projects a distinctive presence in  contemporary letters.” Overall, Mr. Abish published three novels, three collections of short stories, a volume of poems, and the memoir.

His most acclaimed novel was How German Is it, which explored the complex interplay between modern Germany, with its strong postwar economy and ordered society, and its roots in the Nazi era. The book won a PEN/Faulkner prize for fiction in 1981 — one of a string of accolades that punctuated Mr. Abish’s life as a writer and scholar at several American universities and colleges. He became a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1998.