Philip Roth

In 1960 Philip Roth won the National Book Award, America’s prestigious literary prize, for his first book, Goodbye Columbus. Last month he was awarded the Man Booker International, a biennial prize for a body of work. In the half century between, for his astonishing output of 53 books, Roth has also gathered in every one of the important American laurels, including the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, the Gold Medal in fiction, the National Medal of Arts


1933 Philip Milton Roth born in Newark, New Jersey, to Herman and Bess Roth (née Finkel).

1950 Leaves Weequahic High School, Newark.

1954 Leaves Bucknell University in Pennsylvania with BA in English.

1955 Awarded MA at University of Chicago; joins US army.

1956 Returns to Chicago after spinal injury. Receives honourable discharge. Roth works as instructor at University of Chicago, teaching English composition.

1957 Roth meets novelist Saul Bellow, and the pair become life-long friends.

1959 Marries Margaret Martinson Williams.

1960 Roth’s first book, Goodbye, Columbus, a novella and five short stories, wins National Book Award.

1962 Letting Go, his first full-length novel, is published.

1963 Roth and Williams separate.

1968 Williams dies in a road accident.

1969 Portnoy’s Complaint published to widespread acclaim and controversy.

1974 My Life as a Man published, the first novel to feature Nathan Zuckerman, his literary alter-ego or “alter-brain” as Roth later described him,

1986 The Counterlife wins National Book Critics Circle Award.

1990 Marries Claire Bloom, a British actress.

1994 Roth and Bloom separate.

1998 American Pastoral wins the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The first of three novels known as the American Trilogy, it is followed by I Married a Communist (1998) and The Human Stain (2000).

2003 Awarded honorary doctorate of letters by Harvard.

2005 The Plot Against America (2004), which imagines Charles Lindbergh, the aviator hero and political isolationist, elected president in the 1940 election ahead of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, wins Sidewise Award for alternate history and the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for best historical fiction.

2008 Wins PEN/Saul Bellow Award for achievement in American fiction.

2010 Wins National Humanities Medal. The award is presented by President Obama at the White House in 2011.

2011 Winner of the Man Booker International Prize (www.manbookerprize.com) for fiction. The prize will be awarded to Roth at a ceremony in London on Tuesday.

Philip Roth at home in Connecticut