Philip Roth was born in Newark New Jersey on 19 March 1933. The second child of
second-generation Americans Bess and Herman Roth Roth grew up in the largely Jewish community
of Weequahic a neighbourhood he was to return to time and again in his writing. After
graduating from Weequahic High School in 1950 he attended Bucknell University Pennsylvania
and the University of Chicago where he received a scholarship to complete his M.A. in English
Literature. In 1959 Roth published Goodbye Columbus ¿ a collection of stories and a novella
¿ for which he received the National Book Award. Ten years later the publication of his fourth
novel Portnoy¿s Complaint brought Roth both critical and commercial success firmly securing
his reputation as one of America¿s finest young writers. Roth was the author of thirty-one
books including those that were to follow the fortunes of Nathan Zuckerman and a fictional
narrator named Philip Roth through which he explored and gave voice to the complexities of the
American experience in the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries. Roth¿s lasting contribution
to literature was widely recognised throughout his lifetime both in the US and abroad. Among
other commendations he was the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize the International Man Booker
Prize twice the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Book Award
and presented with the National Medal of Arts and the National Humanities Medal by Presidents
Clinton and Obama respectively. Philip Roth died on 22 May 2018 at the age of eighty-five
having retired from writing six years previously.
