," . . [a] comic masterpiece, a glittering virtuoso performance. It is laughing-out-loud funny . . ." - Wall Street JournalUnabridged on audio, read by Ron Silver and directed by the author, Philip Roth Portnoy's Complaint is the famously outrageous confession made to his analyst by Alexander Portnoy, the Huck Finn of Newark, who is trust through life by his unappeasable sexuality, yet held back at the same time by the iron grip of his unforgettable childhood. Thirty years after it was first published, Portnoy's Complaint remains a classic of American literature, a tour de force of comic and carnal brilliance, and probably the funniest book about sex ever written. It was recently designated one of the hundred best books of the twentieth century by the Modern Library judges."An American masterpiece." -Life
Philip Milton Roth Book order (chronological)






The Humbling
- 140 pages
- 5 hours of reading
Everything is over for Simon Axler, the protagonist of Philip Roth's startling new book. One of the leading American stage actors of his generation, now in his 60s, he has lost his magic, his talent, and his assurance. His Falstaff and Peer Gynt and Vanya, all his great roles, "are melted into air, into thin air". When he goes on stage he feels like a lunatic and looks like an idiot. His confidence in his powers has drained away; he imagines people laughing at him; he can no longer pretend to be someone else. "Something fundamental has vanished." His wife has gone, his audience has left him, his agent can't persuade him to make a comeback. Into this shattering account of inexplicable and terrifying self-evacuation bursts a counterplot of unusual erotic desire, a consolation for the bereft life so risky and aberrant that it points not toward comfort and gratification but to a yet darker and more shocking end. In this long day's journey into night, told with Roth's inimitable urgency, bravura, and gravity, all the ways that we persuade ourselves of our solidity, all our life's performances - talent, love, sex, hope, energy, reputation - are stripped off. Following the dark meditations on mortality and endings in Everyman and Exit Ghost, and the bitterly ironic retrospective on youth and chance in Indignation, Roth has written another in his haunting group of late novels.
Verslag van de ziektegeschiedenis en het aftakelingsproces van de 86-jarige vader van de auteur.
Het leven van een bejaard universitair docent wordt door een onterechte beschuldiging van racisme verwoest, wat des te pijnlijker is omdat hijzelf altijd heeft gezwegen over het feit dat hij een neger is.
"Seymour 'Swede' Levov - a legendary high school athlete, a devoted family man, a hard worker, the prosperous inheritor of his father's Newark glove factory - comes of age in thriving, triumphant post-war America. But everything he loves is lost when the country begins to run amok in the turbulent 1960s. American Pastoral is the story of a fortunate American's rise and fall - of a strong, confident master of social equilibrium overwhelmed by the forces of social disorder."--Publisher's website.
Het contraleven
Roman
Ideeënroman over militant nationalisme in het hedendaagse Israël, verhuld antisemitisme in de Britse middenklasse en het belang van een religieuze en politieke identiteit.
Sabbath's theater
- 464 pages
- 17 hours of reading
This is the story of Mickey Sabbath, a disgraced puppeteer who, after the death of his long-time mistress, embarks on a raging journey into dionysian extremism, madness and bitter understanding. Philip Roth won the 1995 National Book Award.
Het Contraleven
- 368 pages
- 13 hours of reading
Ideeënroman over militant nationalisme in Israël, verhuld antisemitisme in de Britse middenklasse en het belang van een religieuze en politieke identiteit.
Vaarwel, Columbus en vijf korte verhalen
- 252 pages
- 9 hours of reading


