Pulitzer award-winning author Philip Roths iconic and sensational novel about sex, psychoanalysis and growing up
Portnoy's Complaint n. [after Alexander Portnoy (1933-)]:A disorder in which strongly-felt ethical and altruistic impulses are perpetually warring with extreme sexual longings, often of a perverse nature. Portnoys Complaint,arguably Philip Roths best-known novel, tells the tale of young Jewish lawyer Alexander Portnoy and his scandalous sexual confessions to his psychiatrist. As narrated by Portnoy, he takes the reader on a journey through his childhood to adolescence to present day while articulating his sexual desire, frustration and neurosis in shockingly candid ways. Hysterically funny and daringly intimate,Portnoys Complaintwas an immediate bestseller upon its publication and elevated Roth to an international literary celebrity.
The most outrageously funny book about sex writtenPortnoy's Complaintis still a masterclass in how to get beneath the skin of sexuality. Has any other novel managed it quite so well?Guardian
Philip Roth (1933-2018) won the Pulitzer Prize forAmerican Pastoralin 1997.In 1998 he received the National Medal of Arts at the White House, and in 2002 the highest award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Gold Medal in Fiction, previously awarded to John Dos Passos, William Faulkner and Saul Bellow, among others. He twice won the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He won the PEN/Faulkner Award three times. In 2005The Plot Against Americareceived the Society of American Historians Prize for the outstanding historical novel on an American theme for 20032004.
Roth received PENs two most prestigious prizes: in 2006 the PEN/Nabokov Award for a body of work . . . of enduring originality and consummate craftsmanship and in 2007 the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction, given to a writer whose scale of achievement over a sustained career . . . places him or her in the highest rank of American literature. In 2011 Roth won the International Man Booker Prize.
