The Counterlife, Philip Roth
The Counterlife, Philip Roth
1 Rating(s)
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The Counterlife

Author: Philip Roth

Narrator: Malcolm Hillgartner

Unabridged: 12 hr 14 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/01/2016


Synopsis

The Counterlife is about people enacting their dreams of renewal and escape, some of them going so far as to risk their lives to alter seemingly irreversible destinies. Wherever they may find themselves, the characters of The Counterlife are tempted unceasingly by the prospect of an alternative existence that can reverse their fate.Illuminating these lives in transition and guiding us through the book’s evocative landscapes, familiar and foreign, is the mind of the novelist Nathan Zuckerman. His is the skeptical, enveloping intelligence that calculates the price that’s paid in the struggle to change personal fortune and reshape history, whether in a dentist’s office in suburban New Jersey, a tradition-bound English Village in Gloucestershire, a church in London’s West End, or a tiny desert settlement in Israel’s occupied West Bank.

About Philip Roth

Philip Roth (1933–2018) was one of the most decorated writers in American history, having won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction, the National Book Critics Circle Award twice, the PEN/Faulkner Award three times, the National Book Award, and many more. He also won the Ambassador Book Award of the English-Speaking Union and in the same year received the National Medal of Arts at the White House. In 2001 he received the highest award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Gold Medal in Fiction, given every six years “for the entire work of the recipient.”

About Malcolm Hillgartner

Malcolm Hillgartner is an accomplished actor, writer, and musician. Named an AudioFile Best Voice of 2013 and the recipient of several Earphones Awards, he has narrated over 250 audiobooks.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Dave

Once upon a time, when I went to a therapist for marital counseling, the doctor asked me, “Where have you visited that you might like to live? “ “Let’s say Las Cruces, or Santa Fe, or Boulder,” I said. “Fine, what would Santa Fe might be like for you? How might you be different there?” “Ah, right,”......more

Acesta este al doilea roman pe care îl citesc, scris de Philip Roth și mi-a plăcut mai mult decât primul roman citit, de același autor, "Viața mea de bărbat". Titlul romanului ne pune deja în temă cu ceea ce urmează să descoperim citindu-l. Astfel, lucrurile fiind puse în comparație, temele sunt: I......more

Goodreads review by Roger

The Question before Finkler Entertaining, thought-provoking, technically brilliant, and timely. Timely too in its relationship to another much-lauded book, Howard Jacobson's The Finkler Question, the most recent Man Booker winner. By coincidence, a friend gave me her copy of the Roth on the same day......more


Quotes

“Magnificent…I hope The Counterlife felt, as Mr. Roth wrote it, like a triumph, because that is certainly how it reads to me.” New York Times Book Review

“No other writer combines such a surface of colloquial relaxation and even dishevelment with such a dense load of mediating intelligence….Roth has never written more scrupulously or, in spots, more lovingly.” New Yorker

“Roth is a comic genius….In this book (wonderfully sharp, worryingly intense) he is an electrifier.” Atlantic

“Disenfranchisement, re-creation, and the severe guilt of independence are the I beams of Roth’s Zuckerman books—of which this is one—but never has the ceiling vaulted so high, the aim been so nervy…Certainly Roth’s most complex, ambitious work—and one of his best.” Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Roth has written a puzzle, but one with passion and purpose.” Library Journal