Thursday, March 19, 2009

American Pastor

The American writer Philip Roth celebrates his 76th birthday today. 

He has won three PEN/ Faulkner Awards: for Operation Shylock, The Human Stain, and Everyman.

He has received two National Book Awards: for Goodbye, Columbus, and Sabbath's Theater.

He got a Pulitzer Prize (for American Pastoral) and a National Book Critics Circle award (for The Counterlife). 

Several others were awards finalists.

In 2006 The New York Times Book Review released the results of their poll of the best American fiction in the last 25 years. Of 22 books, six were his: American Pastoral, The Counterlife, The Human Stain, Operation Shylock, The Plot Against America, and Sabbath's Theater.

The critic Harold Bloom ranks him alongside Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy, and Thomas Pynchon as the best American novelists of our time.

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