The Professor of Desire

By Philip Roth

Categories: Literature & Fiction

Philip Roth's 1977 novel follows David Kepesh from his boyhood in the Catskills through his student years in London, a failed marriage to the glamorous Helen, and his later love for the steady, kind Claire. Torn between desire and the wish for a calm life, Kepesh, now a literature professor, travels to Prague, visits Kafka's grave and wonders whether lasting happiness is possible.

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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.”