Everyman

By Philip Roth

Categories: Literature & Fiction

Philip Roth's 2006 novel, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award, begins at the funeral of its unnamed hero, a retired advertising art director from New Jersey. It then traces his life through his childhood, three marriages, his children, his brother and a series of illnesses and operations, as he faces aging, loneliness and the fear of death that he shares with everyone.

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• Barack Obama: “Some of the great books by Jewish authors like Philip Roth or Saul Bellow, they are steeped with this sense of being an outsider, longing to get in, not sure what you're giving up — what you're willing to give up and what you're not willing to give up.”