Understanding Philip Roth

The main aim of this work is to provide a comprehensive guide to the major writings of Philip Roth, articulating the overlapping contexts of his fiction. Dealing with the range of Roth's work - starting with Goodbye, Columbus in 1959, and including works from the 1960s and 1970s such as When She was Good, Portnoy's Complaint and My Life as a Man to The Counterlife in 1987 - this analytic study elaborates the course of his career as a major western writer who responds to the modern situation, the contemporary Jewish and ethnic predicament, the problems of gender and American literary, social and political history.