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American Pastoral
  • Published: 1 October 2019
  • ISBN: 9781784875541
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 448
  • RRP: $29.99

American Pastoral

Formats & editions
Paperback
1 Oct 2019
Paperback
6 Apr 1998
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New to Vintage Classics, this is the Pulitzer-prize winning novel that exposed the American psyche. Still profoundly resonant today, it confirmed Philip Roth as one of the greatest American writers of the twentieth century.

'A tragedy of classical proportions...a magnificent novel' The Times

Discover the Pulitzer-prize winning novel that confirmed Philip Roth as one of the greatest American writers.

'Swede' Levov is living the American dream.

He glides through life cocooned by his devoted family, lucrative business, sporting prowess and good looks. He is the embodiment of thriving, post-war America, land of liberty and hope.

Until one sunny day in 1968, when Swede's daughter, Merry, commits an outlandishly savage act of political terrorism and the Levov family is plunged into mayhem. Extraordinarily nuanced and poignant, American Pastoral is the first in an eloquent trilogy of post-war American novels that still resonates today.
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PRAISE FOR AMERICAN PASTORAL:
'Angry, grieving, witty, acute' Sunday Times
'A profound and personal meditation on the changes in the American psyche over the last fifty years' Financial Times
'A momentous novel' Observer
'Utterly tragic and compelling' Tatler
  • Published: 1 October 2019
  • ISBN: 9781784875541
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 448
  • RRP: $29.99

About the author

Philip Roth

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.
portrait photo of Philip Roth

Also by Philip Roth

The Humbling
Nemesis
Indignation
Exit Ghost
The Facts
When She Was Good
Letting Go
See all

Praise for American Pastoral

Marvellous... Raging and elegaic

Guardian

A tragedy of classical proportions...a magnificent novel

The Times

Utterly tragic and compelling. It's one of the greatest modern American novels

Tatler

Wonderful, rich...entirely gripping

Sunday Telegraph

A momentous novel

Observer

Full of insight, full of sharp ironic twists, full of wisdom about American idealism, and full of terrific fun... A profound and personal meditation on the changes in the American psyche over the last fifty years

Financial Times

Brilliantly written...angry, grieving, witty, acute...compellingly and convincingly rendered

Sunday Times

[American Pastoral’s] mix of sly humour and incendiary passages that expose the dark heart of the American dream

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