Patrimony - (Vintage International) by Philip Roth (Paperback)

About the Book

"A tough-minded, beautifully written memoir" (San Francisco Chronicle), this National Book Critics Circle Award winner tells a true, emotionally touching story. Roth watches as his 86-year-old father--famous for his vigor, charm, and his repertoire of Newark recollections--battles with the brain tumor that will kill him. "A deeply resonant portrait of a father and son".--Chicago Tribune.

Book Synopsis

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD - "A tough-minded, beautifully written memoir" (San Francisco Chronicle) about a son watching his elderly father battle with the brain tumor that will kill him--from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of American Pastoral.

Patrimony, a true story, touches the emotions as strongly as anything Philip Roth has ever written. Roth watches as his eighty-six-year-old father--famous for his vigor, charm, and his repertoire of Newark recollections--fights the brain tumor that will kill him. The son, full of love, anxiety, and dread, accompanies his father through each fearful stage of his final ordeal, and, as he does so, discloses the survivalist tenacity that has distinguished his father's long, stubborn engagement with life.

Review Quotes

"A tough-minded, beautifully written memoir.... It smacks of honesty and truthfulness on every page." --San Francisco Chronicle

"A deeply resonant portrait of a father and son.... Roth has looked past all comfort and condolence to find the truth--about himself and his father; about death and the fear of it; and about the absolute vulnerability to which love condemns us all." --Chicago Tribune

"In a cunningly straightforward way, Patrimony tells one of the central true stories many Americans share nowadays.... Such telling is a marvel of artful wit and vigor.... It is the triumphant art of the literal ... the gloriously pragmatic, unpredictable genius of Philip Roth's narrative gifts." --The New York Times Book Review

About the Author

PHILIP ROTH won the Pulitzer Prize for American Pastoral. In 1998 he received the National Medal of Arts at the White House and in 2002 the highest award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Gold Medal in Fiction. He twice won the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He won the PEN/Faulkner Award three times. In 2005 The Plot Against America received the Society of American Historians' Prize for "the outstanding historical novel on an American theme for 2003-2004." Roth received PEN's two most prestigious awards: in 2006 the PEN/Nabokov Award and in 2007 the PEN/Bellow Award for achievement in American fiction. In 2011 he received the National Humanities Medal at the White House, and was later named the fourth recipient of the Man Booker International Prize. He died in 2018.