Sabbath's Theater: National Book Award Winner

by Philip Roth

Overview

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of American Pastoral delivers his "richest, most rewarding novel" (The New York Times Book Review) about Micky Sabbath, a scandalous hero who embarks on a turbulent journey into his past.

One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years

Once an inventive puppeteer, Sabbath at sixty-four is still defiantly antagonistic and exceedingly libidinous. But after the death of his long-time mistress—an erotic free spirit whose adulterous daring surpassed even his own—Sabbath, bereft and grieving and besieged by the ghosts of those who loved and hated him most, contrives a succession of farcical disasters that take him to the brink of madness and extinction.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780679772590
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/06/1996
Series:	Vintage International
Pages:	464
Sales rank:	138,644
Product dimensions:	5.15(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.95(d)

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.

Hometown:

Connecticut

Date of Birth:

March 19, 1933

Place of Birth:

Newark, New Jersey

Education:

B.A. in English, Bucknell University, 1954; M.A. in English, University of Chicago, 1955

Editorial Reviews

ONE OF THE NEW YORKER'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR

"A great work ... Roth's richest, most rewarding novel ... funny and profound ... as powerful as writing can be." —The New York Times Book Review

"This splendidly wicked book ... is among the most remarkable novels in recent years.... The energy of the book is amazing.... Roth is hilariously serious about life and death." —Frank Kermode, The New York Review of Books

"Roth's extraordinary new novel is an astonishment and a scourge, and one of the strangest achievements of fictional prose that I have ever read.... It is very exquisite." —James Wood, New Republic

From the Publisher

Roth's erotic black comedy of an aging puppeteer won the National Book Award. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Those of us who missed reading this 1995 National Book Award winner have another chance to acquaint ourselves with the principal character, Mickey Sabbath—this time in audio. Narrator David Dukes brings this antihero to life. He’s a depraved 64-year-old retired puppeteer who lives off his alcoholic wife while pursuing his sexual excesses with another woman. Dukes bellows, whispers, cajoles, purrs, cries, and even taunts us with Sabbath’s sexual escapades until we’re ready to cry uncle. Then Dukes starts all over again. This clearly is one Roth offering that’s even better in audio. A.L.H. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

JUN/JUL 08 - AudioFile