American Pastoral (Paperback, Reissue)

The author's alter ego, Nathan Zuckermann, takes a back seat to narrate the story of Seymour 'the Swede' Levov. a blonde-haired blue-eyed (but, of course, Jewish) family man with the most unRothian yearning for a settled life. This being a Roth novel, anyone who longs for a simple, innocent existence free from the turbulence and hate of the American century, is asking for trouble and the Swede gets it in spades; the Eisenhower 1950s turn into the weird 60s and America goes to pieces. The Swede's wife cracks up, his daughter, the anger-fuelled Merry, puts a bomb into a post office, kills a passer-by and goes on the run, all is madness and despair. Roth has never written better as he rages against the slide into nihilism and permissiveness that has characterised life in America in the last 30 years. Reading Roth is not a comfortable experience but it has never been more exhilarating. (Kirkus UK)

Seymour 'Swede' Levov - a legendary high school athlete, a devoted family man, a hard worker, the prosperous inheritor of his father's glove factory - comes of age in thriving, triumphant, postwar America. He has a beautiful wife - Miss New Jersey 1949 - and a lively, precocious daughter, Merry. She is the apple of his eye - until America begins to run amok in the turbulent 1960s and Merry grows up to be a revolutionary terrorist bent on destroying her father's paradise. With vigorous realism, one of America's most esteemed writers takes us back to the conflicts and violent transitions of the 1960s. This is a book about loving- and hating- America. It's a book about wanting to belong- and refusing to belong-to America. It sets the desire for an American pastoral - a respectable life of space, calm, order, optimism, and achievement - against the indigenous American berserk.

General

Imprint:	Vintage
Country of origin:	United Kingdom
Release date:	March 1998
Authors:	Philip Roth
Dimensions:	198 x 128 x 28mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback - B-format
Pages:	423
Edition:	Reissue
ISBN-13:	978-0-09-977181-4
Categories:	Books > Fiction > General & literary fiction > Modern fiction Books > Fiction > Genre fiction > Historical fiction
LSN:	0-09-977181-0
Barcode:	9780099771814

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