Patrimony: A True Story

By Philip Roth

Categories: Biographies & Memoirs

Philip Roth's 1991 memoir, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, is about the illness and death of his father, Herman Roth, a retired insurance manager in New Jersey. After Herman, in his eighties, is diagnosed with a brain tumor, his son cares for him, and the book traces their bond, his father's stubborn character, and the family history he leaves behind.

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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.”