The Professor of Desire

philip roth

David Kepesh, an adventurous man of intelligence and feeling, tries to make his way to both pleasure and dignity through a world of sensual possibilities. Temptation comes to him in both its ordinary and spectacular forms, and the novel charts the history of his desire from the early years, when he is acceded to it totally, to the time when he attempts to domesticate his passions (and his wife's) and finally to that most surprising moment when desire ebbs and, frighteningly, seems on the brink of disappearance. The book explores in all its painful ramifications, the pursuit and loss of erotic happiness.

Genres fictionnovelsliterary fictionamericancontemporaryliteraturethe united states of americaclassicseroticaamericana

263 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,1977

Series

David Kepesh

Literary awards

national book critics circle award,

This edition

Format: 263 pages, Paperback
Published: January 1, 1995 by Vintage Books USA
ISBN
ASIN: 0099389010
Language: English

Characters More characters

David Kepesh

...

About the author

philip roth

Philip Milton Roth was an American novelist and short-story writer. Roth's fiction—often set in his birthplace of Newark, New Jersey—is known for its intensely autobiographical character, for philosophically and formally blurring the distinction between reality and fiction, for its "sensual, ingenious style" and for its provocative explorations of American identity. He first gained attention with the 1959 short story collection Goodbye, Columbus, which won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. Ten years later, he published the bestseller Portnoy's Complaint. Nathan Zuckerman, Roth's literary alter ego, narrates several of his books. A fictionalized Philip Roth narrates some of his others, such as the alternate history The Plot Against America.
Roth was one of the most honored American writers of his generation. He received the National Book Critics Circle award for The Counterlife, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Operation Shylock, The Human Stain, and Everyman, a second National Book Award for Sabbath's Theater, and the Pulitzer Prize for American Pastoral. In 2005, the Library of America began publishing his complete works, making him the second author so anthologized while still living, after Eudora Welty. Harold Bloom named him one of the four greatest American novelists of his day, along with Cormac McCarthy, Thomas Pynchon, and Don DeLillo. In 2001, Roth received the inaugural Franz Kafka Prize in Prague.