Goodbye, Columbus

philip roth

Neil Klugman and pretty, spirited Brenda Patimkin - he of poor Newark, she of suburban Short Hills - meet one summer and dive into an affair that is as much about social class and suspicion as it is about love. The novella, the first book published by Phillip Roth, explores issues of both class and Jewish assimilation into American culture. It won the National Book Award in 1960.

©1993 Phillip Roth (P)2009

Genres fictionshort storiesclassicsjewishliteratureliterary fictionamericannovelsthe united states of americanovella

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1,1959

Literary awards

national book award, national jewish book award,

Places

newark new jersey, short hills new jersey,

This edition

Format: 320 pages, Hardcover
Published: May 2, 1995 by Modern Library
ISBN: 9780679601593
ASIN: 0679601597
Language: English

Characters More characters

Neil Klugman

...
Brenda Patimkin

...

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.