Philip Roth

`When the renowned aviation hero and rabid isolationist Charles A. Lindbergh defeated Franklin Roosevelt by a landslide in the 1940 presidential election, fear invaded every Jewish household in America. Not only had Lindbergh, in a nationwide radio address, publicly blamed the Jews for selfishly pushing America toward a pointless war with Nazi Germany, but, upon taking office as the thirty-third president of the United states, he negotiated a cordial...

What impact can American history have on the life of the vulnerable individual? It is 1951 in America, the second year of the Korean War. A studious, law-abiding, intense youngster from Newark, New Jersey, Marcus Messner, is beginning his sophomore year on the pastoral, conservative campus of Ohio's Winesburg College. And why is he there and not at the local college in Newark where he originally enrolled? Because his father, the sturdy, hard-working...

A New York lawyer, dominated by a demanding Jewish mother, plays out a sexual revenge in fact and fantasy.

Nathan Zuckerman comes back to New York, the city he left eleven years before. ALone on his NEw England mountain, Zuckerman has been nothing but a writer: no voices, no media, no terrorist threats, no women, no news, no tasks other than his work and the enduring of old age. Walking the streets of his hometown again, Zuckerman makes three connections that explode his carefully protected solitude: with a young couple he entices with a home swap, with...

A successful commercial artist with three very different ex-wives, a daughter who adores him, and two sons who despise him, the protagonist finds his confidence, sense of independence, and well-being undermined by an attack of illness in middle age.

The life of an old man who lives for sex. He is Morris Sabbath, 64, a New York puppeteer who made his name with lewd performances. Feeling death approaching, he relives his many amorous adventures in graphic detail. By the author of Portnoy's Complaint.

At 23, ambitious Nathan Zukerman has had four stories published, received a complimentary profile in Saturday Review, and has alienated his family with his unflattering biographical bent. When well-known author E.I. Lonoff invites Nathan to his secluded New England home, the budding young writer hopes to learn from a master. Instead of inspiration, however, Nathan encounters a man whose self-absorption borders on egomania and a hauntingly mysterious...

Thirteen-year-old Ozzie's questioning of what he is taught in religious class leads to a tense confrontation with his rabbi.

Coleman Silk is a respected professor at a New England college who suddenly finds his life unraveling after a comment he makes about some African-American students is misinterpreted as a racial slur. As the scandal heats up, Nathan Zuckerman, a writer researching a biography of Silk, begins to dig deeply into Silk's life. Eventually, matters are made worse when Coleman's affair with a young married janitor named Faunia Farley is exposed. But amid...

Cultural critic David Kepesh finds his state of 'emancipated manhood' thrown into tragic disarray. David is a renowned college professor whose life is turned inside out when he becomes involved in a passionate relationship with Consuela. Consuela is a well-mannered student who awakens a sense of sexual possessiveness in her teacher. As their sexual relationship evolves, an incredible love story is born.