Philip Roth

Steven J. Zipperstein is the Daniel E. Koshland Professor in Jewish Culture and History at Stanford University. He is the author or editor of ten books, including Rosenfeld’s Lives: Fame, Oblivion, and the Furies of Writing and Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History. He lives in Berkeley, CA.

“Mr. Zipperstein’s volume [is] composed with the tact of a historian who has read the archives and the novels with equal care, . . . rescuing Roth from the noise and restoring him to the exuberant sentences he spent his life turning around.”—Benjamin Balint, Wall Street Journal“A moving portrait of Roth in all his complexity.”—Emily Gould, New York Magazine“Well-modulated and immensely erudite. . . . This biography will introduce Roth to new readers as one of the great prose stylists of the 20th century and one of the most influential voices in shaping American Jewish identity.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)“Slim and eloquent . . . consistently insightful. . . . Dishes head-turning revelations from archives and informants.”—David Mikics, Jewish Review of Books“An admiring, thorough, and swift account of an immensely single-minded writer’s unabating struggles with ambition, romance, and the politics of his time, [with] some fascinating scoops‚ major interviews and materials to which Zipperstein alone had access.”—Julius Taranto, The Forward“A compelling, vividly drawn account of a literary giant. . . . Zipperstein’s portrayal of his subject is fastidious, respectful but not obsequious, and occasionally sharp about Roth’s shortcomings and failures.”—Megan Peck Shub, Haaretz“Zipperstein is a judicious reader, and writer. He reminds us how much of Roth’s work was engaged with the business of writing. . . . This does what all good biographies should do: it sends us back to the works.”—Nicholas Lezard, The Oldie“Excellent new biography. . . . I grabbed it at my favorite Manhattan bookshop before returning to Jerusalem last week and devoured it over Shabbat, even skipping synagogue and an invitation to a meal so I could tear through its nearly 300 delicious pages.”—Stephen Daniel Arnoff, Jewish Telegraphic Agency“Zipperstein’s biography. . . delivers a concise and penetrating look at a problematic subject. . . . Fans of Roth will relish Zipperstein’s relatively light touch and resistance to the kind of lurid exposition that marks out some of his previous biographies.”—Irish News“Roth's life and writing abound in moments that bring him forward, and Zipperstein has a discerning antenna for curating and sharing many of the most revealing ones.”—Michael Frank, Times Literary Supplement“This is one of the fairest and finest literary biographies I have read, with the emphasis on literary. Zipperstein does Philip Roth and his life’s work more than justice. He has produced a book that is a work of literature itself. Not every writer is what Roth called (and was called) ‘a writer’s writer.’ And not every scribe who undertakes to write a major life is truly a writer’s biographer. Zipperstein is one.”—Judith Thurman, author of Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller“Steven Zipperstein’s appreciation of Philip Roth is literary biography at its best. Acute and original judgments of Roth’s written worlds come embraided with revelatory portrayals of the worlds Roth inhabited, scrutinized, and provoked, and of Roth himself, solemn and hilarious, voraciously curious, a boundless sensual spirit riven by his craft.”—Sean Wilentz, author of Bob Dylan in America