American Pastoral

Marvellous... Raging and elegaic * Guardian * 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 * Philip Roths American Pastoral is one of those books you know is going to change you in some profound way shortly after you start reading it and it did for me. I read it last summer and nothing has quite surpassed it for me since. A very painful read. * Irish Times * [American Pastoral] is gorgeously written with passages of breathtaking beauty filled with wisdom and pathos -- Sarfraz Manzoor * Week * [American Pastoral] is gorgeously written with passages of breathtaking beauty filled with wisdom and pathos -- Sarfraz Manzoor * Waitrose Weekend *

Philip 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, Portnoys Complaint, brought Roth both critical and commercial success, firmly securing his reputation as one of Americas 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 voice to the complexities of the American experience in the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries. Roths 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 having retired from writing six years previously.