9780099477563

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‘America’s greatest living novelist’ Sunday Times

‘There aren’t supposed to be degrees or intensities of uniqueness, and yet Roth is somehow inordinately unique. He is bloodymindedly himself, himself, himself’

Martin Amis

‘Opening the first page of any Philip Roth is like hearing the ignition on a boiler roar into life. Passion is what we’re going to get, and plenty of it’

Guardian

‘He is a writer of quite extraordinary skill and courage; and he takes on bigger enemies in every book he writes’

Frank Kermode

‘Philip Roth is a great historian of modern eroticism’

Milan Kundera

‘There is a clarity, almost a ruthlessness, to his work, which makes the experience of reading any of his books a bracing, wild ride’

The Times

‘He is skilled, witty, energetic and performs like a virtuoso’

Saul Bellow

‘Nobody writes about the American family with more tenderness and honesty’

New Statesman

‘Roth is a living master’

Harold Bloom

PHILIP ROTH

In 1997 Philip Roth won the Pulitzer Prize for American Pastoral. In 1998 he received the National Medal of Arts at the White House, and in 2002 the highest award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Gold Medal in Fiction, previously awarded to John Dos Passos, William Faulkner and Saul Bellow, among others. He has twice won the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He has won the PEN/Faulkner Award three times.

In 2005 The Plot Against America received the Society of American Historians’ Prize for ‘the outstanding historical novel on an American theme for 2003–2004’.

Recently Roth received PEN’s two most prestigious prizes: in 2006 the PEN/Nabokov Award ‘for a body of work . . . of enduring originality and consummate craftsmanship’ and in 2007 the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction, given to a writer whose ‘scale of achievement over a sustained career . . . places him or her in the highest rank of American literature’. In 2011 Roth won the International Man Booker Prize.

Roth is the only living American writer to have his work published in a comprehensive, definitive edition by the Library of America.

BY

BY

BY

ALSO BY

Zuckerman Books

Zuckerman Books

The Ghost Writer

Zuckerman Books

The Ghost Writer

Zuckerman Books

The Anatomy Lesson

The Ghost Writer

The Anatomy Lesson

The Ghost Writer

The Anatomy Lesson

The Prague Orgy

The Prague Orgy

The Anatomy Lesson

The Prague Orgy

The Counterlife

The Prague Orgy

The Counterlife

The Counterlife

The Counterlife

American Pastoral

American Pastoral

American Pastoral

I Married a Communist

I Married a Communist

American Pastoral

I Married a Communist

The Human Stain

The Human Stain

I Married a Communist

The Human Stain

The Human Stain

Exit Ghost

Exit Ghost

Exit Ghost

Exit Ghost

Roth Books

Roth Books

Roth Books

The Facts • Deception

Roth Books

The Facts • Deception

Patrimony • Operation Shylock

The Facts • Deception

Patrimony • Operation Shylock

The Facts • Deception

Patrimony • Operation Shylock

The Plot Against America

The Plot Against America

Patrimony • Operation Shylock

The Plot Against America

Kepesh Books

The Plot Against America

Kepesh Books

The Breast

Kepesh Books

The Breast

Kepesh Books

The Professor of Desire

The Breast

The Breast

The Professor of Desire

The Dying Animal

The Professor of Desire

The Dying Animal

The Professor of Desire

The Dying Animal

The Dying Animal

Nemeses: Short Novels

Nemeses: Short Novels

Nemeses: Short Novels

Everyman • Indignation

Nemeses: Short Novels

Everyman • Indignation

The Humbling • Nemesis

Everyman • Indignation

The Humbling • Nemesis

Everyman • Indignation

The Humbling • Nemesis

Miscellany

The Humbling • Nemesis

Miscellany

Reading Myself and Others

Miscellany

Reading Myself and Others

Miscellany

Reading Myself and Others

Shop Talk

Shop Talk

Reading Myself and Others

Shop Talk

Shop Talk

Other Books

Other Books

Other Books

Other Books

Goodbye, Columbus • Letting Go When She Was Good • Portnoy’s Complaint • Our Gang

Goodbye, Columbus • Letting Go When She Was Good • Portnoy’s Complaint • Our Gang

Goodbye, Columbus • Letting Go When She Was Good • Portnoy’s Complaint • Our Gang

The Great American Novel • My Life as a Man

Goodbye, Columbus • Letting Go When She Was Good • Portnoy’s Complaint • Our Gang

The Great American Novel • My Life as a Man

Sabbath’s Theater

The Great American Novel • My Life as a Man

Sabbath’s Theater

The Great American Novel • My Life as a Man

Sabbath’s Theater

Sabbath’s Theater

PHILIP ROTH Zuckerman Unbound

9 10 8

9 10 8

Vintage,

Vintage,

20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SW1V 2SA

20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SW1V 2SA

Vintage is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com

Copyright © Philip Roth 1981

Copyright © Philip Roth 1981

Vintage is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com

Philip Roth has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

Vintage, 2016

This edition reissued in Vintage in 2015 First published by Vintage in 1995

This edition reissued in Vintage in 2015 First published by Vintage in 1995

Philip Roth has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

First published in Great Britain in 1981 by Jonathan Cape Scenes from this book appeared in a somewhat different form in the Atlantic, the New Yorker and Playboy

First published in Great Britain in 1981 by Jonathan Cape Scenes from this book appeared in a somewhat different form in the Atlantic, the New Yorker and Playboy

A limited first edition has been privately printed in the USA

A limited first edition has been privately printed in the USA

www.vintage-books.co.uk

penguin.co.uk/vintage 9 by Jonathan Cape in

www.vintage-books.co.uk

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9780099477563

ISBN 9780099477563

Printed and bound by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

Printed and bound by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

Penguin Random House is committed to a sustainable future for our business, our readers and our planet. This book is made from Forest Stewardship Council® certified paper

Penguin Random House is committed to a sustainable future for our business, our readers and our planet. This book is made from Forest Stewardship Council® certified paper

FOR PHILIP GUSTON

1913–1980

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