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
Roth is a living master * New York Review of Books *
When She Was Good, both its sustained theme and its detail work, is a step above most recent novels... Roth is a serious writer, willing to turn his face against fashion and the expected, and to take improbable chances' * New York Times *
High, careful tragedy, nasty as life, and Roth emerges...as a Dreiser who can write! -- Stanley Elkin
Compassion mingles with horror in a superb portrayal of a young woman's obsession with moral rectitude * Saturday Review *
