Everyman

Everyman Synopsis

WINNER OF THE PEN/FAULKNER AWARD

"Let's use a noun I've never used before: masterpiece." -Joseph O'Neill, The Atlantic

"An exquisite effort . . . spare and unrelenting in its evocation of the limits of morality." -Los Angeles Times

"[Roth is] as essential to the experience of modern America-its literature, history, and moral reckoning-as any writer on the planet." -The Boston Globe

Philip Roth's novel is a candidly intimate yet universal story of loss, regret, and stoicism. The fate of Roth's everyman is traced from his first shocking confrontation with death on the idyllic beaches of his childhood summers, through the family trials and professional achievements of his vigorous adulthood, and into his old age, when he is rended by observing the deterioration of his contemporaries and stalked by his own physical woes.

The terrain of this powerful novel is the human body. Its subject is the common experience that terrifies us all.