Full of insight, full of sharp ironic twists, full of wisdom about American idealism, and full of terrific fun... A profound and personal meditation on the changes in the American psyche over the last fifty years
Financial Times
A tragedy of classical proportions...a magnificent novel
The Times
Wonderful, rich...entirely gripping
Sunday Telegraph
A momentous novel
Observer
Brilliantly written...angry, grieving, witty, acute...compellingly and convincingly rendered
Sunday Times
Utterly tragic and compelling. It's one of the greatest modern American novels
Tatler
[American Pastoral’s] mix of sly humour and incendiary passages that expose the dark heart of the American dream
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About Philip Roth
Philip Roth was born in Newark, New Jersey on 19 March 1933, to second-generation Americans Bess and Herman. He grew up in the largely Jewish community of Weequahic, a neighbourhood his writing returned to time and again.
Roth received the National Book Award for his first book, Goodbye, Columbus (1959), but it was his fourth, Portnoy’s Complaint (1969)which secured his reputation as one of America’s finest writers, and American Pastoral (1997) which won the Pulitzer Prize. Roth wrote thirty-one books in all, winning the International Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award twice. He was presented with the National Medal of Arts and the National Humanities Medal by Presidents Clinton and Obama, respectively.
Roth died aged eighty-five on 22 May 2018, six years after retiring from writing.
