Philip Roth’s five most important books

Philip Roth, one of the most celebrated authors of the 20th century, has died at the age of 85.

The New Jersey-born novelist won a host of literary awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, two National Book Awards and two National Book Critics Circle awards, and possessed “brilliant comic gifts buttressed by a first-class mind”, says The Spectator.

Roth died in a New York hospital of congestive heart failure on Tuesday night, The New York Times reports.

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Here are five of his finest works:

Goodbye, Columbus, 1959

Roth’s first book, Goodbye, Columbus is a collection of short stories set in various parts of New Jersey, including the titular novella.

“The debut is classic Roth,” says Esquire. “Irreverent, provocative, sexy, and both a celebration and a slight indictment of middle-class Jewish identity in postwar America.”

The collection was an enormous commercial and critical success and won Roth the 1960 US National Book Award for Fiction.

Portnoy’s Complaint, 1969

By far his best-known work, Portnoy’s Complaint also remains his most controversial, says The Guardian.

“The wildly comic monologue charts the life of Alexander Portnoy as he pursues sexual release through ever more extreme erotic acts, held back only by the iron grip of his Jewish American upbringing,” says the newspaper.

In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Portnoy’s Complaint 52nd on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.

Sabbath’s Theater, 1995

“Roth’s coarsest, frankest, and most exhilarating novel, Sabbath’s Theater shows off Roth’s linguistic verve, his brilliant characterisation, and his unparalleled ability to stare unblinkingly into the psyche of a depraved scoundrel,” says Read It Forward, a website dedicated to all things literary.

“Sabbath’s Theater is the best of what Roth can do: bring us down into the deepest caverns of the savage mind of men.”

American Pastoral, 1997

Roth’s novel American Pastoral is widely considered to be his masterpiece, winning him the Pulitzer Prize in 1998.

The book’s narrator and frequent Roth alter ego Nathan Zuckerman tells the story of his former high-school classmate, Swede, whose suburban life is destroyed when his daughter becomes involved with a domestic terrorist group.

“The novel is Roth’s attempt to understand the chaos and madness of the 1960s and their lasting effects on the American psyche,” says Esquire.

The Plot Against America, 2004

Ambitious and unusual, The Plot Against America tells an alternate version of 20th century history in which aviator and anti-Semite Charles Lindbergh wins the Republican nomination for US president for the 1940 election and defeats Franklin Roosevelt.

The fictionalised history is told from the perspective of Roth as a child, depicting Lindbergh’s landslide victory and an ensuing treaty with Hitler in which Lindbergh promises that the US won’t interfere in the Second World War.