Philip Roth

"Portnoy's Complaint"

Published October 6, 2000 12:20AM (EDT)

Philip Roth is the author of numerous other books and recipient of numerous awards, including Patrimony, winner of the the National Book Critics Circle Award; Operation Shylock, winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award; Sabbath's Theater, winner of the National Book Award; and American Pastoral, winner of the Pulitzer Prize. In 1998, he was a White House recipient of the National Medal of Arts.

Portnoy's Complaint is the famously outrageous confession made to his analyst by Alexander Portnoy, the Huck Finn of Newark, who is thrust through life by his unappeasable sexuality, yet held back by the iron grip of his unforgettable childhood. Thirty years after it was first published, Portnoy's Complaint is considered a classic of American literature and one of the funniest books about sex ever written. It was recently designated one of the hundred best books of the twentieth century by the Modern Library judges.

Listen now to an excerpt of Portnoy's Complaint courtesy of Harper Audio/Caedmon, directed by Philip Roth and performed by Ron Silver, a Tony award-winning stage actor.

" . . . [a] comic masterpiece, a glittering virtuoso performance. It is laughing-out-loud funny . . ." - Wall Street Journal


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