Description
In American Pastoral, Philip Roth gives us a novel of unqualified greatness that is an elegy for all the twentieth century's promises of prosperity, civic order, and domestic bliss. Roth's protagonist, Seymour 'Swede' Levov — a legendary high school athlete, a devoted family man, a hard worker, and the prosperous inheritor of his father's Newark glove factory — comes of age in thriving, triumphant post-war America. And then one day in 1968, Swede's beautiful American luck deserts him.
Swede's adored daughter, Merry, has grown from a loving, quick-witted girl into a sullen, fanatical teenager — capable of an outlandishly savage act of political terrorism. And overnight Swede is wrenched out of the longed-for American pastoral and into the indigenous American berserk. Compulsively readable, propelled by sorrow, rage, and a deep compassion for its characters, this is Roth's masterpiece.
Endorsements
Pulitzer Prize Winner — 1998
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