The Counterlife

by Philip Roth Narrated by Malcolm Hillgartner

Overview

The Counterlife is about people enacting their dreams of renewal and escape, some of them going so far as to risk their lives to alter seemingly irreversible destinies. Wherever they may find themselves, the characters of The Counterlife are tempted unceasingly by the prospect of an alternative existence that can reverse their fate.

Illuminating these lives in transition and guiding us through the book's evocative landscapes, familiar and foreign, is the mind of the novelist Nathan Zuckerman. His is the skeptical, enveloping intelligence that calculates the price that's paid in the struggle to change personal fortune and reshape history, whether in a dentist's office in suburban New Jersey, a tradition-bound English Village in Gloucestershire, a church in London's West End, or a tiny desert settlement in Israel's occupied West Bank.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"Magnificent ... splendid.... I hope The Counterlife felt, as Mr. Roth wrote it, like a triumph, because that is certainly how it reads to me." —William Gass, The New York Times Book Review

"Roth is a comic genius.... In this book (wonderfully sharp, worryingly intense) he is an electrifier." —Martin Amis, The Atlantic

"No other writer combines such a surface of colloquial relaxation and even dishevelment with such a dense load of mediating intelligence.... Roth has never written more scrupulously or, in spots, more lovingly." —John Updike, The New Yorker

Atlantic

Roth is a comic genius….In this book (wonderfully sharp, worryingly intense) he is an electrifier.”

New York Times Book Review

Magnificent…I hope The Counterlife felt, as Mr. Roth wrote it, like a triumph, because that is certainly how it reads to me.”

New Yorker

No other writer combines such a surface of colloquial relaxation and even dishevelment with such a dense load of mediating intelligence….Roth has never written more scrupulously or, in spots, more lovingly.”

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169635744
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	10/01/2016
Series:	Zuckerman , #5
Edition description:	Unabridged

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