The Counterlife

Philip Roth

Philip Roth was one of the greatest authors of the twentieth century. Born in Newark, New Jersey on 19 March 1933, Roth grew up in the largely Jewish community of Weequahic, a neighbourhood he was to return to time and again in his writing. He attended Bucknell University, Pennsylvania and the University of Chicago, receiving a scholarship to complete his M.A. in English Literature. In 1959, Roth published his first book Goodbye, Columbus 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. Roth was the author of thirty-one books through which he explored and gave voice to the complexities of the American experience in the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries. Roth’s lasting contribution to literature was widely recognised throughout his lifetime, both in the US and abroad. Among other commendations he was the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, the International Man Booker Prize, twice the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Book Award, and presented with the National Medal of Arts and the National Humanities Medal by Presidents Clinton and Obama, respectively. Philip Roth died on 22 May 2018 at the age of eighty-five.