Description
Book SynopsisPhilip Roth was born in Newark, New Jersey on 19 March 1933. The second child of second-generation Americans, Bess and Herman Roth, Roth grew up in the largely Jewish community of Weequahic, a neighbourhood he was to return to time and again in his writing. After graduating from Weequahic High School in 1950, he attended Bucknell University, Pennsylvania and the University of Chicago, where he received a scholarship to complete his M.A. in English Literature.
In 1959, Roth published Goodbye, Columbus a collection of stories, and a novella for which he received the National Book Award. Ten years later, the publication of his fourth novel, Portnoy's Complaint, brought Roth both critical and commercial success, firmly securing his reputation as one of America's finest young writers. Roth was the author of thirty-one books, including those that were to follow the fortunes of Nathan Zuckerman, and a fictional narrator named Philip Roth, through which he explored and gave
Trade Review
A passionate and coruscating American tragedy * Financial Times *
Knotted with energy, barely wasting a scene or word in its cracking velocity * Mail on Sunday *
One of the great political novels of our age; a card-carrying Shakespearean tragedy with New Jersey dirt beneath its fingernails -- Xan Brooks * Guardian *
Quintessential Philip Roth * Sunday Telegraph *
A magnificent novel of ideas, a disquisition on the fallout of the death of ideology * Observer *
