American Pastoral: American Trilogy (1) (Vintage International) - Softcover

Roth, Philip

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0375701427 ISBN 13: 9780375701429

Publisher: Random House USA Inc, 1998

Synopsis

Seymour "Swede" Levov - a legendary high school athlete, a devoted family man, a hard worker, the prosperous inheritor of his father's Newark glove factory - comes of age in thriving, triumphant postwar America. But everything he loves is lost when the country begins to run amok in the turbulent 1960s. Not even the most private, well-intentioned citizens, it seems, gets to sidestep the sweep of history. "American Pastoral" is the story of a fortunate American's rise and fall - of a strong, confident master of social equilibrium overwhelmed by the forces of social disorder. For the Swede is not allowed to stay forever blissful inside the beloved hundred-and-seventy-year-old stone farmhouse, in rural Old Rimrock, where he lives with his pretty wife - the college sweetheart who was Miss New Jersey of 1949 - and the lively, precocious daughter who is the apple of his eye. The apple of his eye, that is, until she grows up to be a revolutionary terrorist bent on destroying her father's paradise. "American Pastoral" presents a vivid portrait of how the innocence of Swede Levov is swept away by the times - of how everything industriously created by his family in America over three generations is left in a shambles by the explosion of a bomb in his own bucolic backyard.

About this title

Review:

"One of Roth's most powerful novels ever...moving, generous and ambitious...a fiercely affecting work of art." --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"Dazzling...a wrenching, compassionate, intelligent novel...gorgeous." --Boston Globe

"At once expansive and painstakingly detailed.... The pages of American Pastoral crackle with the electricity and zest of a first-rate mind at work." --San Francisco Chronicle

Book Description:

A special celebratory edition to mark the 21st birthday of Vintage books.

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House USA Inc
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0375701427
• ISBN 13: 9780375701429
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 432