The Humbling

“ This is another dark and wonderfully written meditation on life and love by one of American's greatest living writers ”

Ruth Atkins, Bookseller

“ There is a clarity, almost a ruthlessness, to his work, which makes the experience of reading any of his books a bracing, wild ride... He is the great postwar chronicler of America... He is the last of the giants ”

Erica Wagner, The Times

“ Slim, fast-moving, sometimes funny but mostly bleak read ... original and unsettling ”

Aravind Adiga, The Times

“ Roth is no longer a novelist of comic exuberance, but of thoughtful meditation about life and increasingly death; he is our surviving laureate of lateness. His new work will not detain you long, but it will linger ”

Stephen Abell, Telegraph

“ His most savage and unrelenting work yet ... (Roth) has lost neither his voice nor his power to shock ”

Rosemary Goring, Sunday Herald

“ The novel, bleak, uncertain, and full of fear, finds traction in familiar Rothian interrogations - of the self's deviousness, the impossible murkiness of motive, and the performative nature of identity - and it is these which produce the book's cruellest apprehension: "The failures were his, as was the bewildering biography on which he was impaled. ”

The New Yorker

“ Roth's late prodigious burst of creativity continues ”

Siobhan Murphy, Metro

“ Roth ...knows no limits, which is part of the fun of reading him ”

Jason Cowley, New Stateman

“ Adds to his reputation as one of American literature's greats ”

The Times

“ While the other big beasts of his literary generation lost it one by one, Roth has enjoyed a flowering of late form barely seen since Yeats. And these little masterpieces are coming out once a year, if not faster ”

Literary Review

“ Told with the customary subtle, spare and beautiful prose that is Roth's mark ”

The Tablet

“ At his best when things are at worst ”

Daily Express

“ The great man of American literature still flashes with brilliance ”

Lucy Tobin, Sunday Express

“ Witty and provocative ”

Helen Brown, Daily Mail

“ Roth scores a palpable hit ”

Economist

“ I read everything by Philip Roth...As he's got older he's writing these incredible, unflinching books about the ageing process ”

Tracey Thorn, The Word

“ wonderful touches ”

Adam Lively, Sunday Times

“ The Humbling is a stark triptych of breakdown, rehabilitation and outcome that reprises recent themes of loss, ageing and sexual potency. ”

Financial Times

“ ...the book's prose is pure Roth, perfect and precise...While Roth's Humbling may be occasionally implausible, his humbling (small "h") has been more real: since publication, critics have attacked this book, suggesting that Roth, like Axler, has "lost his magic". He hasn't. There are definitely some silly moments here but there are also some perfect ones. Roth's talent is, unlike Axler's, far more dead. ”

Times

“ a grimly funny commentary of the universal drama of ageing. ”

The Times