Philip Roth was born in Newark, New Jersey. He studied at Bucknell University and earned an M.A. in English literature at the University of Chicago in 1955. His first book, Goodbye, Columbus (1959), won the National Book Award.
His novels include Portnoy's Complaint (1969), Sabbath's Theater (1995), American Pastoral (1997), The Human Stain and The Plot Against America (2004). American Pastoral won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. He died in Manhattan in 2018.