Philip Roth: The Biography

Author(s): Blake Bailey

Memoir & Biography

The renowned biographer's definitive portrait of a literary titan


Appointed by Philip Roth and granted complete access and independence, Blake Bailey spent years poring over Roth's personal archive, interviewing his friends, lovers, and colleagues, and engaging Roth himself in breathtakingly candid conversations.


The result is an indelible portrait of an American master and of the post-war literary scene. Bailey shows how Roth emerged from a lower-middle-class Jewish milieu to achieve the heights of literary fame, how his career was nearly derailed by his catastrophic first marriage, and how he championed the work of dissident novelists behind the Iron Curtain. Bailey examines Roth's rivalrous friendships with Saul Bellow, John Updike and William Styron, and reveals the truths of his florid love life, culminating in his almost-twenty-year relationship with actress Claire Bloom, who pilloried Roth in her 1996 memoir, Leaving a Doll's House.


Tracing Roth's path from realism to farce to metafiction to the tragic masterpieces of the American Trilogy, Bailey explores Roth's engagement with nearly every aspect of post-war American culture.

$65.00 AUD

Stock: 0


Add to Wishlist


Product Information

General Fields

  • : 9780224098175
  • : Penguin Random House
  • : Penguin Books Ltd
  • : 1.622
  • : February 2021
  • : 5.8 Centimeters X 16.7 Centimeters X 24.2 Centimeters
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : 912
  • : Hardback
  • : Blake Bailey