American Pastoral

Marvellous… Raging and elegaic * Guardian *
Full of insight, full of sharp ironic twists, full of wisdom about American idealism, and full of terrific fun… A profound and personal meditation on the changes in the American psyche over the last fifty years * Financial Times *
A tragedy of classical proportions…a magnificent novel * The Times *
Wonderful, rich…entirely gripping * Sunday Telegraph *
A momentous novel * Observer *
Brilliantly written…angry, grieving, witty, acute…compellingly and convincingly rendered * Sunday Times *
Utterly tragic and compelling. It’s one of the greatest modern American novels * Tatler *
[American Pastoral’s] mix of sly humour and incendiary passages that expose the dark heart of the American dream * i *

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), but it was his fourth, Portnoy’s Complaint (1969) which secured his reputation as one of America’s finest writers. 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 aged eighty-five on May 22, 2018, six years after retiring from writing.

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