Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth

Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth

Regular price
Checking stock...
Regular price
Checking stock...
The feel-good place to buy books
  • Free UK delivery over £5
  • 20% off preloved books right now when you join +Plus
  • Buying preloved emits 46% less CO2 than new
  • Give your books a new home - sell them back to us!

Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth

[after Alexander Portnoy (1933-)]:A disorder in which strongly-felt ethical and altruistic impulses are perpetually warring with extreme sexual longings, often of a perverse nature. Portnoy's Complaint tells the tale of young Jewish lawyer Alexander Portnoy and his scandalous sexual confessions to his psychiatrist.
The most scandalous book of the year and probably the decade-- John Sutherland * The Times *
The most outrageously funny book about sex yet written * Guardian *
A hysterically funny monologue which has already added a new prototype to American literature... Anyone who can recall anything of the awesome mystery and humiliating farce of growing up will find this book compulsive reading. And it is blessedly, extremely funny * Spectator *
Philip Roth's gift for fantasy, his superb dialogue, his ability to evoke places and atmospheres, make Portnoy's Complaint at once hilariously, scabrously funny and deeply moving * Financial Times *
Alexander Portnoy is a great comic character. He is going to be for many readers what his mother was for him: The Most Unforgettable Character I've Met * New Statesman *

Philip Roth was born in Newark, New Jersey on 19 March 1933, to second-generation Americans Bess and Herman. He grew up in the largely Jewish community of Weequahic, a neighbourhood his writing returned to time and again.

Roth received the National Book Award for his first book, Goodbye, Columbus (1959), but it was his fourth, Portnoy’s Complaint (1969) which secured his reputation as one of America’s finest writers, and American Pastoral (1997) which won the Pulitzer Prize. Roth wrote thirty-one books in all, winning the International Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award twice. He was presented with the National Medal of Arts and the National Humanities Medal by Presidents Clinton and Obama, respectively.

Roth died aged eighty-five on 22 May 2018, six years after retiring from writing.

SKU Unavailable
ISBN 13 9780099399018
ISBN 10 0099399016
Title Portnoy's Complaint
Author Philip Roth
Condition Unavailable
Binding Type Paperback
Publisher Vintage Publishing
Year published 1995-05-18
Number of pages 272
Cover note Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.