num_pages: 432
description: Pulitzer Prize Winner (1998)In American Pastoral, Philip Roth gives us a novel of unqualified greatness that is an elegy for all the twentieth century's promises of prosperity, civic order, and domestic bliss. Roth's protagonist is Seymour 'Swede' Levov—a legendary high school athlete, a devoted family man, a hard worker, the prosperous inheritor of his father's Newark glove factory—comes of age in thriving, triumphant post-war America. And then one day in 1968, Swede's beautiful American luck deserts him.For Swede's adored daughter, Merry, has grown from a loving, quick-witted girl into a sullen, fanatical teenager—a teenager capable of an outlandishly savage act of political terrorism. And overnight Swede is wrenched out of the longed-for American pastoral and into the indigenous American berserk. Compulsively readable, propelled by sorrow, rage, and a deep compassion for its characters, this is Roth's masterpiece.
language: English
title: American Pastoral
titlecomplete: American Pastoral
characters: Meredith Levov, Dawn Dwyer, Nathan Zuckerman, Seymour Levov, Jerry Levov
genres: American, Americana, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Novels, Literature, Classics, The United States Of America, Fiction, Contemporary
ratings_count: 77824
places: New Jersey, Newark, New Jersey
series: The American Trilogy, Complete Nathan Zuckerman
awards: awardedAt: 883641600000
name: Pulitzer Prize
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 883641600000
name: Audie Award
category: Solo Narration - Male, awardedAt: 946713600000
name: Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger
category: Roman, awardedAt: 852105600000
name: National Book Critics Circle Award
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 915177600000
name: Dublin Literary Award
publisher: Vintage Books USA