It's Summer, 1944. In the 'stifling heat of equatorial Newark', a terrifying epidemic is raging. Vigorous, decent, twenty-three year old playground director Bucky Cantor is devoted to his charges and disappointed with himself because his weak eyes have excluded him from serving in the war.
Modern fictionIn 1951 in America, the second year of the Korean War, student Marcus is pulled out of his New Jersey school and sent to Ohio by his paranoid father. On his own, far from home, Marcus must make his own way in the world.
Neil, jeune bibliothécaire juif vivant dans le quartier ouvrier de Newark, tombe sous le charme d'une riche étudiante, Brenda. Leur relation va se confronter aux différences sociales et à la pudeur de l'Amérique des années 1950.
À travers cet amour de vacances, Philip Roth esquisse une satire de la société américaine et ses rapports avec le monde juif.
A story that tells about the confession of Alexander Portnoy who is thrust through life by his unappeasable sexuality, yet held back at the same time by the iron grip of his unforgettable childhood.
Seymour Levov, a devoted family man and inheritor of his father's factory, comes of age in thriving post-war America. His daughter Merry is the apple of his eye until America begins to run amok in the turbulent 1960s, and Merry grows up to be a terrorist bent on destroying her father's paradise.
It is 1998, the year in which America is whipped into a frenzy of prurience by the impeachment of a president. It is also the last year of professor Coleman Silk's life, whose own tragic exposure is played out against the background of the Clinton revelations.
Taking office as the 33rd President of the US, Charles A Lindbergh negotiated a cordial 'understanding' with Adolf Hitler. What then followed in America is the historical setting for this novel, which recounts the menacing years of the Lindbergh presidency, when American citizens who happened to be Jews had every reason to expect the worst.
Modern fictionReissue of Roth's espionage and political thriller, with a contemporary new jacket.
When the renowned aviation hero and rabid isolationist Charles A.Lindbergh defeated Franklin Roosevelt by a landslide inthe1940 presidential election, fear invaded every Jewish household in America.Not only had Lindbergh publicly blamed the Jews for pushing America towards a pointless war with Nazi Germany, but, upon taking office as the 33rd president of the United States, he negotiated a cordial 'understanding' with Adolf Hitler. What then followed in America is thehistorical setting for this startling new novel by Pulitzer-prize winner Philip Roth, who recounts what it was like for his Newark family during the menacing years of the Lindbergh presidency, when American citizens who happened to be Jews had every reason to expect the worst.
Radio actor Iron Rinn is a roughneck blighted by a brutal personal secret from which he is perpetually in flight. An idealistic Communist turned popular performer, he marries America's reigning radio actress and silent movie star, Eve Frame. However, both his marriage and his life collapse.
Modern fictionExhibits all Roth's skill as a brilliant observer of human passion, presenting the tightly enclosed world of adulterous intimacy with a directness that has no equal in American fiction.
Intended to be the personification of mankind, this work traces from the author's first shocking confrontation with death on the idyllic beaches of his childhood summers. It is a human story of the regret and loss and stoicism of a man who becomes what he does not want to be.
Modern fictionBilled as Roth's most successful and controversial novel since Portnoy's Complaint, Sabbath's Theater features a characteristically libidinous protagonist, Mickey Sabbath, who, following the death of his mistress, embarks on a turbulent journey into his past.
In 'Zuckerman Unbound' - the second volume in the trilogy and epilogue 'Zuckerman Bound' - the notorious novelist retreats from his oldest friends, breaks his marriage to a virtuous woman, and damages, perhaps irreparably, his affectionate connection to his younger brother... and all because of his great good fortune.
Modern fictionNathan Zuckerman returns to New York after being away for 11 years and finds that everything has changed. Roth's previous book Everyman was a popular recommendation in the Books of the Year round-ups, and he is widely regarded as being the greatest living American writer. 'Consistently enthralling...full of tart humour and dancing intelligence' John Dugdale, Literary Review
How does a novelist write about the facts of his life after spending years fictionalising those facts with irrepressible daring and originality? What becomes of ''the facts'' after they have been smelted down for art''s sake? In The Facts - Philip Roth''s idiosyncratic autobiography - we find out. Focusing on five episodes in his life, Roth gives a portrait of his secure city childhood in Newark, through to his first marriage, clashes with the Jewish establishment over Goodbye, Columbus and his writing of Portnoy''s Complaint . In true Rothian style, his fictional self Nathan Zuckerman is allowed the final, coruscating word of reply.
Like a latter-day Gregor Samsa, Professor David Kepesh wakes up one morning to find that he has been transformed. But where Kafka's protagonist turned into a monstrous cockroach, the narrator of Philip Roth's fantasy has become a 155-pound female breast.
What follows is a deliriously funny yet moving exploration of the full implications of Kepesh's metamorphosis; audacious, heretical - as darkly hilarious as it is existentially unnerving - making new the silliness, triviality and wonderful meaninglessness of lived human experience.
Modern fictionPhilip Roth's new paperback deals with people enacting their dreams of renewal and escape, often going so far as to risk their own lives to alter seemingly irreversible destinies, and who are constantly tempted by the prospect of an alternative existence that can reverse fate.
Modern fictionThe story of the marriage of a gifted young writer and the woman who wants to be his muse but who instead is his nemesis. Their union is based on fraud and shored up by moral blackmail, but it is so perversely durable that long after Maureen's death, Peter is still trying to write his way free of it.
David Kapesh, white-haired and over 60, is a TV culture critic and lecturer at a New York college. He meets Consuela, a 24-year-old student, daughter of wealthy Cuban exiles, who puts his life into erotic disorder and haunts him for the next eight years.
The Ruppert Mundys, once the greatest baseball team in America, are now in a terminal decline, their line-up filled with a disreputable assortment of old men, drunks and even amputees. Around them baseball itself seems to be collapsing, brought down by a bizarre mixture of criminality, stupidity, and The Great Communist Conspiracy, aimed at the very heart of the American way of life.
In this hilarious and wonderfully eccentric novel Philip Roth turns his attention to one of the most beloved of all American rituals: baseball. Players, tycoons and the paying public are all targets as Roth satirises the dense tapestry of myths and legends that have grown up around The Great American Pastime.
Modern fictionFirst volume in a trilogy about the tensions between literature and life.
Modern fictionTwo reissues of classic Roth novels, with brand new jackets. Republished to tie-in with the new hardback, Exit Ghost.