What are Philip Roth’s best books? From American Pastoral and Goodbye, Columbus to Portnoy’s Complaint
The New York novelist who confronted taboos of sex and death was said to be among the greatest writers never to win the Nobel Prize...but he received virtually every other literary honour
PHILIP Roth was one of the towering geniuses of his generation who won the Pulitzer, National Book Award and the Man Booker International Prize.
Here is a little on the life of the American who delved into the neuroses and obsessions of modern life.
Who is Philip Roth and when did he die?
Author Philip Roth died on May 22, 2018, at the age of 85 in New York City.
The cause of death was congestive heart failure, his literary agent Andrew Wylie said.
Born on March 19, 1933, in Newark, New Jersey, he was the middle-class son of an insurance salesman.
Roth earned a bachelor's degree at Buckle University and a master's degree in English from the University of Chicago.
He dropped out of the doctoral programme in 1959 to write film reviews for the New Republic before his first novella Goodbye, Columbus came out.
Roth taught comparative literature, mostly at the University of Pennsylvania.
He retired from teaching in 1992 as a distinguished professor of literature at New York's Hunter College.
Roth married Margaret Martinson in 1959 and they separated in 1963.
She later died in a car crash in 1968.
Roth had a long relationship with British actress Claire Bloom but their five-year marriage ended in divorce in 1995.
A year later, she published a bruising memoir, Leaving a Doll's House, in which she portrayed him as depressed, remote, self-centred and verbally abusive.
Reflecting on himself professionally, Roth said the act of writing for him was "filled with fear and loneliness and anxiety".
But, he added: "There are some days that compensate completely.
"In my life I have had, in total, a couple of months of these completely wonderful days as a writer, and that is enough."
What best-selling books did Philip Roth write?
Roth won the Pulitzer Prize for 1997's American Pastoral, which examined the impact of the 1960s on a New Jersey family.
He was the first three-time winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Operation Shylock in 1994, The Human Stain in 2001 and Everyman in 2007.
His 1991 memoir Patrimony about his dad won the National Book Critics Circle Award.
The National Medal of Arts at the White House was awarded in 1998.
Several of his books have been adapted into films for the big screen including The Human Stain and The Dying Animal.
LATEST ON CELEBS WE'VE LOST
What other books did he write?
Roth wrote more than 30 books. Here are some of the output from the prolific author.
- 1959 - Goodbye, Columbus
- 1962 - Letting Go
- 1967 - When She Was Good
- 1969 - Portnoy’s Complaint
- 1971 - Our Gang
- 1972 - The Breast
- 1973 -The Great American Novel
- 1974 - My Life as a Man
- 1977 - The Professor of Desire
- 1979 - The Ghost Writer
- 1981 - Zuckerman Unbound
- 1983 - The Anatomy Lesson
- 1985 - The Prague Orgy
- 1986 - The Counterlife
- 1988 - The Facts: A Novelist’s Autobiography
- 1990 - Deception
- 1991 - Patrimony: A True Story
- 1993 - Operation Shylock
- 1995 - Sabbath’s Theater
- 1997 - American Pastoral
- 1998 - I Married a Communist
- 2000 - The Human Stain
- 2001 - The Dying Animal
- 2004 - The Plot Against America
- 2006 - Everyman
- 2007 - Exit Ghost
- 2008 - Indignation
- 2009 - The Humbling
- 2010 - Nemesis
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