num_pages: 304
description: From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of American Pastoral--and one of the most renowned writers of the twentieth century--"a ferocious, heartfelt book" (The New Yorker) featuring Nathan Zuckerman whose life is about to unravel when he comes down with a mysterious affliction. Roth has a genius for the comedy of entrapment.... [He] writes America's most raucously funny novels. --TimeAt forty, the writer Nathan Zuckerman comes down with a mysterious affliction--pure pain, beginning in his neck and shoulders, invading his torso, and taking possession of his spirit. Zuckerman, whose work was his life, is unable to write a line. Now his work is trekking from one doctor to another, but none can find a cause for the pain and nobody can assuage it. Zuckerman himself wonders if the pain can have been caused by his own books. And while he is wondering, his dependence on painkillers grows into an addiction to vodka, marijuana, and Percodan.The Anatomy Lesson is a great comedy of illness written in what the English critic Hermione Lee has described as a manner at once ... brash and thoughtful ... lyrical and wry, which projects through comic expostulations and confessions...a knowing, humane authority. The third volume of the trilogy and epilogue Zuckerman Bound, The Anatomy Lesson provides some of the funniest scenes in all of Roth's fiction as well as some of the fiercest.
language: English
title: The Anatomy Lesson
titlecomplete: The Anatomy Lesson
characters: Bobby Freytag, Diana Rutherford, Milton Appel, Ricky, Mr. Freytag, Nathan Zuckerman
genres: Jewish, 20th Century, American, Audiobook, Literary Fiction, Novels, Literature, Classics, The United States Of America, Fiction
ratings_count: 3400
places: New York City, New York, Chicago, Illinois
series: Complete Nathan Zuckerman, Zuckerman Bound
awards: awardedAt: 410256000000
name: National Book Critics Circle Award
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 441792000000
name: National Book Award Finalist
category: Fiction
publisher: Vintage