“Sheer Playfulness and Deadly Seriousness are my closest friends.”

American novelist and short-story writer

Philip Roth was an American novelist and short-story writer. Born in 1933 and active for much of the 20th and early 21st centuries, he is best known for fiction that probes American and Jewish identity with sharp humor and formal daring. Much of Roth's work is set in or shaped by Newark, New Jersey, his birthplace. His books often blur the line between autobiography and invention, and they are marked by sexual candor, philosophical play, and a vivid, inventive style. He first drew wide notice with Goodbye, Columbus, which won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction, and later reached a broad audience with Portnoy's Complaint. Nathan Zuckerman appears in several novels as his literary alter ego, and in others Roth uses a fictionalized version of himself, including The Plot Against America.