American Pastoral

By Philip Roth

1997

Literary Fiction

Pulitzer-winning novel narrated by Roth's recurring alter ego Nathan Zuckerman, who reconstructs the life of his boyhood idol Seymour "the Swede" Levov — a Jewish-American golden boy, high-school sports star, ex-Marine, husband to a former Miss New Jersey, and inheritor of his father's Newark glove factory. The American dream curdles when the Swede's beloved teenage daughter Merry, radicalised against the Vietnam War, bombs the local post office and kills a man. The novel is at once a portrait of 1960s domestic terror, a family tragedy, and a meditation on the impossibility of ever truly knowing another person.