American Pastoral

In , Philip Roth gives us a novel of unqualified greatness that is an elegy for all the twentieth century's promises of prosperity, civic order, and domestic bliss. Roth's protagonist is Seymour 'Swede' Levov-a legendary high school athlete, a devoted family man, a hard worker, the prosperous inheritor of his father's Newark glo In , Philip Roth gives us a novel of unqualified greatness that is an elegy for all the twentieth century's promises of prosperity, civic order, and domestic bliss. Roth's protagonist is Seymour 'Swede' Levov-a legendary high school athlete, a devoted family man, a hard worker, the prosperous inheritor of his father's Newark glove factory-comes of age in thriving, triumphant post-war America.

And then one day in 1968, Swede's beautiful American luck deserts him. For Swede's adored daughter, Merry, has grown from a loving, quick-witted girl into a sullen, fanatical teenager-a teenager capable of an outlandishly savage act of political terrorism. And overnight Swede is wrenched out of the longed-for American pastoral and into the indigenous American berserk.

Compulsively readable, propelled by sorrow, rage, and a deep compassion for its characters, this is Roth's masterpiece.