American Pastoral: Philip Roth - Softcover

Roth, Philip

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1784875546 ISBN 13: 9781784875541

Publisher: Vintage Classics, 2019

Synopsis

‘Swede’ Levov is living the American dream. He glides through life cocooned by his devoted family, lucrative business, sporting prowess and good looks. He is the embodiment of thriving, post-war America, land of liberty and hope. Until one sunny day in 1968, when Swede’s daughter, Merry, commits an outlandishly savage act of political terrorism and the Levov family is plunged into mayhem. This is the Pulitzer-prize winning novel that confirmed Philip Roth as one of the greatest American writers of the twentieth century and that still profoundly resonates today.

'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

About this title

Review:

"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)

About the Author:

Philip Roth was one of the greatest authors of the twentieth century. Born in Newark, New Jersey on 19 March 1933, Roth grew up in the largely Jewish community of Weequahic, a neighbourhood he was to return to time and again in his writing. He attended Bucknell University, Pennsylvania and the University of Chicago, receiving a scholarship to complete his M.A. in English Literature.

In 1959, Roth published his first book Goodbye, Columbus for which he received the National Book Award. Ten years later, the publication of his fourth novel, Portnoy’s Complaint, brought Roth both critical and commercial success. Roth was the author of thirty-one books through which he explored and gave voice to the complexities of the American experience in the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries.

Roth’s lasting contribution to literature was widely recognised throughout his lifetime, both in the US and abroad. Among other commendations he was the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, the International Man Booker Prize, twice the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Book Award, and presented with the National Medal of Arts and the National Humanities Medal by Presidents Clinton and Obama, respectively.

Philip Roth died on 22 May 2018 at the age of eighty-five.

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage Classics
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1784875546
• ISBN 13: 9781784875541
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 448