Synopses & Reviews
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 second volume of the trilogy and epilogue Zuckerman Bound—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...and all because of his great good fortune!
Review
"It was bold of Roth to write a novel about being famous...a comic stroll in a hall of mirrors." Newsweek
Review
"[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
Review
"Zuckerman Unbound is masterful, sure in every touch, as clear and economical of line as a crystal vase." The New York TImes Book Review
Synopsis
In Zuckerman Unbound the second volume of the trilogy and epilogue Zuckerman Bound 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, all of this amidst the tumult of the late 1960s and his own turbulent career.
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 second volume of the trilogy and epilogue Zuckerman Bound--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.
About the Author
In the 1990s Philip Roth won Americas four major literary awards in succession: the National Book Critics Circle Award for
Patrimony (1991), the PEN/Faulkner Award for
Operation Shylock (1993), the National Book Award for
Sabbaths Theater (1995), and the Pulitzer
Prize in fiction for American Pastoral (1997). He won the Ambassador Book Award of the English-Speaking Union for I Married a Communist (1998); in the same year he received the National Medal of Arts at the White House. Previously he won the National Book Critics Circle Award for The Counterlife (1986) and the National Book Award for his first book, Goodbye, Columbus (1959). In 2000 he published The Human Stain, concluding a trilogy that depicts the ideological ethos of postwar America. For The Human Stain Roth received his second PEN/Faulkner Award as well as Britains W. H. Smith Award for the Best Book of the Year. In 2001 he received the highest award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Gold Medal in Fiction, given every six years “for the entire work of the recipient.” In 2005 The Plot Against America received the Society of American Historians Award for “the outstanding historical novel on an American theme for 20032004.” In 2007 Roth received the PEN/Faulkner Award for Everyman.