Philip Milton Roth was born in the Weequahic neighborhood of Newark, New Jersey in 1933. His parents were both second-generation Eastern European immigrants, and he was raised in the Jewish faith. After graduating from Weequahic High School, Roth attended Rutgers University for one year. He later transferred to Bucknell University, where he graduated magna cum laude and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Following undergrad, Roth went on to earn an M.A. in English literature from the University of Chicago. Roth enlisted himself in military service, but he never served due to a medical discharge. After dropping out of a Ph.D. program, Roth taught creative writing at the University of Iowa, Princeton University, and the University of Pennsylvania.
Roth's first book was a novella and a collection of short stories entitled Goodbye Columbus (1959). This work earned Roth his first National Book Award in 1960. Throughout the following decade, Roth published other books, among them Letting Go and When She was Good. His fourth novel, Portnoy's Complaint (1969), was famously controversial for its candid depiction of sexuality. This piece catapulted Roth into the literary spotlight. Roth won a second National Book Award for Sabbath's Theater (1995). American Pastoral, published in 1997, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Nemesis, published in 2010, was the author's 31st and final book.
Although he was raised Jewish, Roth was a staunch atheist and rejected being labeled as a "great Jewish-American" author. To this day, he remains one of the most awarded American authors of his generation. His stories are largely autobiographical, and many of his pieces center around an "alter-ego" protagonist named Nathan Zuckerman. Drawing from his own upbringing and experiences, Roth often chronicled middle-class Jewish life and sought to blur the line between reality and fiction. His later works, which consist of four brief novels published between 2006-2010, focus on the physical and intellectual effects of aging and mortality. Eight of his works were also adapted into films. Philip Roth died from heart failure in Manhattan, New York in May 2018.
American Pastoral is a novel written by Philip Roth and was published in 1997. It is the twenty-second novel by the author. The story explores the development of American history since the late years of the 1940s to the social commotions of during...
Everyman is a retrospective reflective novel about “everyman”. It is written by Philip Roth and was published in 2006 by Hougton Mifflin at 182 pages. There is an audiobook read by George Guidall which was published shortly after the written...
Published in 1959, Goodbye, Columbus: And Five Short Stories was Philip Roth's first book. It contains one novella (Goodbye, Columbus) and five short stories, all of which are semi-autobiographical in nature.
Goodbye, Columbus itself takes place...
Nemesis, published in 2010, chronicles the impact of the 1944 polio epidemic on a middle-class Jewish community in Newark, New Jersey. The protagonist, 23-year-old Bucky Cantor, is ineligible to serve in the war and instead works as the...
Highly controversial and disputed, Portnoy's Complaint is a 1969 novel by Philip Roth which after its publication, sent waves of shock, outrage, and dissension through both critics and the public. The book is infamous for its extremely candid...
