American Pastoral: American Trilogy 1 (Pulitzer Prize Winner) [Paperback]

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize

Here is Philip Roth's masterpiece—an elegy for the American century's promises of prosperity, civic order, and domestic bliss. Roth's protagonist is Swede Levov, a legendary athlete at his Newark high school, who grows up in the booming postwar years to marry a former Miss New Jersey, inherit his father's glove factory, and move into a stone house in the idyllic hamlet of Old Rimrock. And then one day in 1968, Swede's beautiful American luck deserts him.

For Swede's adored daughter, Merry, has grown from a loving, quick-witted girl into a sullen, fanatical teenager—a 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, American Pastoral gives us Philip Roth at the height of his powers."One of Roth's most powerful novels ever...moving, generous and ambitious...a fiercely affecting work of art." —Michiko Kakutani,The New York Times

"Dazzling...a wrenching, compassionate, intelligent novel...gorgeous." —Boston Globe

"At once expansive and painstakingly detailed.... The pages ofAmerican Pastoralcrackle with the electricity and zest of a first-rate mind at work." —San Francisco Chronicle

In 1997 Philip Roth won the Pulitzer Prize forAmerican Pastoral. In 1998 he received the National Medal of Arts atthe White House and in 2002 the highest award of the AmericanAcademy of Arts and Letters, the Gold Medal in Fiction.He twice won the National Book Award and the NationalBook Critics Circle Award. He won the PEN/FaulknerAward three times. In 2005The Plot Against Americareceivedthe Society of American Historians’ Prize for &lC-