Books

New York: Random House, 1969. Signed limited first edition of Roth's breakthrough novel. Octavo, original cloth, topstain red, slipcase. One of 600 numbered copies signed by Philip Roth with this being number 407. Fine in a fine dust jacket in the original slipcase. Along with Saul Bellow's Herzog, Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint defined Jewish American literature in the 1960s. Roth's masterpiece takes place on the couch of a psychoanalyst, an appropriate jumping-off place for an insanely comical novel about the Jewish American experience. Roth has written several great books--Goodbye, Columbus and When She Was Good among them, but it is perhaps Portnoy's Complaint for which he is best known. "Philip Roth has the fineset eye for the details of American life since Sinclair Lewis" (Stanley Edgar Hyman). Named by Modern Library as one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Time included this novel in its "TIME 100 Best English-language…

Portnoy's Complaint is notable for its explicit and candid treatment of sexuality and for its reflection on Jewish identity in modern America.