Nobody writes about the American family with more tenderness and honesty New Statesman A simple, moving, generous work Independent on Sunday The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away - with words. But the Lord giveth back, miraculously, in the form of this book and this family history Guardian A true story, told with all the powerful authority and cunning narrative order of a major writer Sunday Times His best work since The Counterlife Observer About the Author Philip Roth was born in Newark, New Jersey on 19 March 1933. The second child of second-generation Americans, Bess and Herman Roth, Roth grew up in the largely Jewish community of Weequahic, a neighbourhood he was to return to time and again in his writing.