Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories

By Philip Roth

Categories: Literature & Fiction

Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories (1959) is Philip Roth's first book. It won the National Book Award. The title novella follows a summer romance between working-class Neil Klugman and Brenda Patimkin of Short Hills across class lines in midcentury New Jersey. The five stories around it stake out Roth's early ground: Jewish American family life, desire, status anxiety and comic unease.

Recommended by 1 person

• Fareed Zakaria: “My book of the week is Philip Roth's "Goodbye, Columbus." Roth, who died last week, was, to my mind, the most important American novelist of the last half century. In 2006 the New York Times did a survey of the best of American fiction of the prior 25 years and six of Philip Roth's books received multiple votes from prominent critics. This is his debut, a collection of short stories written when he was 26 years old that won the National Book Award in 1960.”