The Humbling

By Philip Roth

Categories: Literature & Fiction

Philip Roth's 2009 short novel follows Simon Axler, a celebrated stage actor in his sixties who suddenly loses his ability to act. After his career collapses and his wife leaves, he spends time in a psychiatric hospital and then retreats to his farmhouse, where he begins an affair with Pegeen, the daughter of old friends, who is twenty-five years younger.

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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.”