About
Philip Milton Roth (; March 19, 1933 – May 22, 2018) was an American novelist and short-story writer. Roth's fiction—often set in his birthplace of Newark, New Jersey—is known for its intensely autobiographical character, sexual humor, philosophical and formal blurring of the distinction between reality and fiction, "sensual, ingenious style", and provocative explorations of Jewish and American identity. Roth first gained attention with the 1959 short story collection Goodbye, Columbus, which won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. Ten years later, he published the bestseller Portnoy's Complaint. Roth's literary alter ego Nathan Zuckerman narrates several of his books. A fictionalized Roth narrates others, such as the alternate history The Plot Against America.