Portnoy's Complaint

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.

"Philip Roth's gift for fantasy, his superb dialogue, his ability to evoke places and atmospheres, makes Portnoy's Complaint at once hilariously, scandalously funny and deeply moving" -- Philip French Financial Times "Alexander Portnoy is a great comic character. He is going to be for many readers what his mother was for him: The Most Unforgettable Character I've Met" -- Julian Mitchell New Statesman "A hysterically funny monologue which has already added a new prototype to American literature... Anyone who can recall anything of the awesome mystery and humiliating farce of growing up will find this book compulsive reading. And it is blessedly, extremely funny" -- Tony Tanner Spectator "If it doesn't make you laugh, you may have lost your sense of humour" Week "Scabrous language and fantastic comic energy" Jewish Renaissance