Sabbath's Theater

By Philip Roth

Categories: Literature & Fiction

Philip Roth's 1995 novel, which won the National Book Award, follows Mickey Sabbath, a sixty-four-year-old former puppeteer living in a New England village. After the death of Drenka, his longtime lover, Sabbath sets off on a wild, grieving journey to New York, where he revisits his past, offends nearly everyone he meets, and wonders whether to end his life or go on living.

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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.”