Zuckerman Unbound - (Vintage International) by Philip Roth (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A "masterful" novel (The New York Times Book Review) from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of American Pastoral tells the story of a bestselling writer whose life is falling apart--all because of his great good fortune.

Now in his mid-thirties, Nathan Zuckerman, a would-be recluse despite his newfound fame as a bestselling author, ventures onto the streets of Manhattan in the final year of the turbulent sixties. Not only is he assumed by his fans to be his own fictional satyr, Gilbert Carnovsky ("Hey, you do all that stuff in that book?"), but he also finds himself the target of admonishers, advisers, and sidewalk literary critics. The recent murders of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., lead an unsettled Zuckerman to wonder if "target" may be more than a figure of speech.

In Zuckerman Unbound, the notorious novelist Nathan Zuckerman retreats from his oldest friends, breaks his marriage to a virtuous woman, and damages, perhaps irreparably, his affectionate connection to his younger brother.

From the Back Cover

In 'Zuckerman Unbound'--the second volume of the trilogy and epilogue 'Zuckerman Unbound'--the notorious novelist retreats from his oldest friends, breaks his marriage to a virtuous woman, and damages, perhaps irreparably, his affectionate connection to his younger brother... and all because of his great good fortune!

Review Quotes

"It was bold of Roth to write a novel about being famous...a comic stroll in a hall of mirrors." --Newsweek

"[Roth's] narrative hand is wonderfully sure, his comic timing worthy of the Ritz Brothers.... Not since Henry MIller has anyone learned to be as funny and compassionate and brutal and plaintive in the space of a paragraph." --Village Voice

"Zuckerman Unbound is masterful, sure in every touch, as clear and economical of line as a crystal vase." --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.