Description: Eine intime und doch universale Geschichte von Verlust, Reue und stoischem Gleichmut. Roth zeichnet das Schicksal seines Jedermann nach: Er ist der Vater zweier Söhne aus erster Ehe, die ihn verachten, und einer Tochter aus einer späteren Ehe, die ihn vergöttert. Er, der einsame Ex-Ehemann von drei ganz verschiedenen Frauen. Am Ende ist er zu einem verbitterten Mann geworden, der mit seinem Schicksal hadert – ein Mann, der er nie sein wollte.

Description: Amerika 1951, im zweiten Jahr des Koreakrieges. Marcus Messner, Sohn eines aufrechten Metzgers im jüdischen Viertel von Newark, scheint alles richtig zu machen: Er ist ein gewissenhafter Schüler, der nur Bestnoten schreibt. Doch bei seinem Eintritt ins Winesburg College möglichst weit weg von seinem übervorsichtigen Vater wird alles in Frage gestellt, was er bisher für normal gehalten hat. Er verliebt sich in seine Kommilitonin Olivia, die sich großzügig mit sexuellen Gefälligkeiten zeigt, gerät mit der College-Leitung in Konflikt, begegnet indirekter Diskriminierung und isoliert sich immer mehr. Diese Geschichte gerät so rasant in Fluss, dass Sie nicht mehr stoppen können, bis der Strudel der letzten Momente Ihnen völlig den Atem nimmt.

Description: Roth's classic "Goodbye Columbus" is accompanied by five short stories that range from the iconoclastic to the the astonishingly tender, illuminating the subterranean conflicts between parents and children and neighbors in the new postwar America of the forties and fifties.

Description: Philip Roth is one of the most acclaimed American authors of the 20th century. His Zuckerman novels, based on the "fictional" exploits of emotionally conflicted Jewish novelist Nathan Zuckerman, are a splendid mix of comedy and tragedy. Zuckerman Unbound considers the problem of artistic triumph born of domestic upheaval. Roth's prose finds an extraordinary complement with George Guidall's robust narration.

Description: In this mesmerizing, funny, chilling novel, the setting is a small town in the 1940s Midwest, the subject the heart of a wounded and ferociously moralistic young woman, one of those implacable American moralists whose "goodness is a terrible disease". When she was still a child, Lucy Nelson had her alcoholic failure of a father thrown in jail. Ever since then, she has been trying to reform the men around her, even if that ultimately means destroying herself in the process. With his unerring portraits of Lucy and her hapless, childlike husband, Roy, Roth has created an uncompromising work of fictional realism, a vision of provincial American piety, yearning, and discontent that is at once pitiless and compassionate.

Description: As a student in college, David Kepesh styles himself "a rake among scholars, a scholar among rakes". Little does he realize how prophetic this motto will be - or how damning. For as Philip Roth follows Kepesh from the domesticity of childhood into the vast wilderness of erotic possibility, from a menage a trios in London to the throes of loneliness in New York, he creates a supremely intelligent, affecting, and often hilarious novel about the dilemma of pleasure: where we seek it; why we flee it; and how we struggle to make a truce between dignity and desire.

Description: The Plot Against America explores a wholly imagined thesis and sees it through to the end: Charles A. Lindbergh defeats FDR for the Presidency in 1940. Lindbergh, the "Lone Eagle," captured the country's imagination by his solo Atlantic crossing in 1927 in the monoplane, Spirit of St. Louis, then had the country's sympathy upon the kidnapping and murder of his young son. He was a true American hero: brave, modest, handsome, a patriot. According to some reliable sources, he was also a rabid isolationist, Nazi sympathizer, and a crypto-fascist. It is these latter attributes of Lindbergh that inform the novel. The story is framed in Roth's own family history: the family flat in Weequahic, the neighbors, his parents, Bess and Herman, his brother, Sandy and seven-year-old Philip. Jewishness is always the scrim through which Roth examines American contemporary culture. His detractors say that he sees persecution everywhere, that he is vigilant in "Keeping faith with the certainty of Jewish travail"; his less severe critics might cavil about his portrayal of Jewish mothers and his sexual obsession, but generally give him good marks, and his fans read every word he writes and heap honors upon him. This novel will engage and satisfy every camp.

Description: Philip Roth is the master of the uncomfortable, and his alter ego, a connoisseur of self-involvement, self-loathing, and self-examination. In The Ghost Writer, Roth examines the tensions between literature and life, artistic truthfulness and conventional decency. At 23, Nathan Zuckerman has already hurt his family with his autobiographical art and ruined his relationship with adultery and dishonesty. Visiting his reclusive idol (famed for his "blend of sympathy and pitilessness") in the Berkshires, the writer watches himself watching himself and attempts to confront his work and life. Events, however, have their revenge, weaving more out of control than even he can anticipate or ask for.

Description: Philip Roth is the master of the uncomfortable, and his alter ego, a connoisseur of self-involvement, self-loathing, and self-examination. In The Ghost Writer, Roth examines the tensions between literature and life, artistic truthfulness and conventional decency.At 23, Nathan Zuckerman has already hurt his family with his autobiographical art and ruined his relationship with adultery and dishonesty.Visiting his reclusive idol (famed for his "blend of sympathy and pitilessness") in the Berkshires, the writer watches himself watching himself and attempts to confront his work and life. Events, however, have their revenge, weaving more out of control than even he can anticipate or ask for.