ONE OF THE ATLANTIC'S GREAT AMERICAN NOVELS OF THE PAST 100 YEARS
WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD

A dirty and depraved masterpiece. -Taffy Brodesser-Akner, The New York Times

An astonishment and a scourge, and one of the strangest achievements of fictional prose that I have ever read. . . . It is very exquisite. -James Wood, The New Republic

This splendidly wicked book. . . . The energy of the book is amazing. . . . Roth is hilariously serious about life and death. -Frank Kermode, The New York Review of Books

Sabbath's Theater is a comic creation of epic proportions, and Mickey Sabbath is its gargantuan hero. Once a scandalously inventive puppeteer, Sabbath at sixty-four is still defiantly antagonistic and exceedingly libidinous. But after the death of his longtime mistress-an erotic free spirit whose adulterous daring surpassed even his own-Sabbath embarks on a turbulent journey into his past. Bereft and grieving, besieged by the ghosts of those who loved and hated him most, he contrives a succession of farcical disasters that take him to the brink of madness and extinction.

ONE OF THE ATLANTIC'S GREAT AMERICAN NOVELS OF THE PAST 100 YEARS
WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD

A dirty and depraved masterpiece. -Taffy Brodesser-Akner, The New York Times

An astonishment and a scourge, and one of the strangest achievements of fictional prose that I have ever read. . . . It is very exquisite. -James Wood, The New Republic

This splendidly wicked book. . . . The energy of the book is amazing. . . . Roth is hilariously serious about life and death. -Frank Kermode, The New York Review of Books

Sabbath's Theater is a comic creation of epic proportions, and Mickey Sabbath is its gargantuan hero. Once a scandalously inventive puppeteer, Sabbath at sixty-four is still defiantly antagonistic and exceedingly libidinous. But after the death of his longtime mistress-an erotic free spirit whose adulterous daring surpassed even his own-Sabbath embarks on a turbulent journey into his past. Bereft and grieving, besieged by the ghosts of those who loved and hated him most, he contrives a succession of farcical disasters that take him to the brink of madness and extinction.