Exit Ghost

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.

"Here is a noble revelation of the curel vulnerability of the body we live in without choice" -- Nadine Gordimer, Nobel Laureate Times Literary Supplement "Consistently enthralling...full of tart humour and dancing intelligence" -- John Dugdale Literary Review "Nobody who has followed him - one of the great writers of our time - thus far, should miss it" Scotsman "There are few writers who write with such power of the loss of powers" Times Literary Supplement "A great book, a necessary book" Sunday Herald