Philip Roth author page

Philip Roth biography

Philip Roth (1933–2018) was an American novelist, widely recognised as one of the most significant writers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Born in Newark, New Jersey, he studied at Bucknell University and the University of Chicago, where he later taught English.

Roth’s first collection, Goodbye, Columbus (1959), won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. He achieved international prominence with Portnoy’s Complaint (1969), noted for its controversial exploration of sexuality and Jewish identity. Over the following decades he produced more than thirty books, many of which drew on American history, politics and culture.

His work includes the sequence featuring his alter ego Nathan Zuckerman, beginning with The Ghost Writer (1979). Other major titles are Patrimony (1991), Sabbath’s Theater (1995), American Pastoral (1997), The Human Stain (2000) and Everyman (2006). American Pastoral won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1998, and both Sabbath’s Theater and The Human Stain won the PEN/Faulkner Award.

Roth received many honours during his career, including the National Medal of Arts in 1998 and the Gold Medal in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2001. In 2012 he was awarded the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature. He announced his retirement from writing in 2012.

Roth died in Manhattan on 22 May 2018, aged 85. His body of work continues to be studied for its exploration of identity, morality and the complexities of modern American life.