The Counterlife

Roth is a comic genius… In this book (wonderfully sharp, worryingly intense) he is an electrifier – Martin Amis
Unquestionably his masterpiece – John Banville
Boisterously serious, dense, fizzing and formally audacious… The final thing that needs to be said about The Counterlife…is that it’s fucking funny – Julian Barnes * London Review of Books *
No other writer combines such a surface of colloquial relaxation with such a dense load of mediating intelligence - Roth has never written more scrupulously or, in spots, more lovingly – John Updike * New Yorker *
Magnificent…splendid… I hope The Counterlife felt, as Mr. Roth wrote it, like a triumph, because that is certainly how it reads to me * New York Times Book Review *

Philip Roth was born in Newark, New Jersey on March 19, 1933, to second-generation Americans Bess and Herman. He grew up in the largely Jewish community of Weequahic, a neighborhood his writing returned to time and again.

Roth received the National Book Award for his first book, Goodbye, Columbus (1959). His fourth novel, Portnoy’s Complaint (1969), secured his reputation as one of America’s finest writers, and American Pastoral (1997) 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 at the age of eighty-five on May 22, 2018, six years after retiring from writing.

This item is eligible for free returns within 30 days of delivery. See our returns policy for further details.