Order of Philip Roth Books

Philip Roth was a Pulitzer Prize winning author best known for his Nathan Zuckerman series of books. Roth wrote American Pastoral in 1997 and won the Pulitzer Prize. He was given the inaugural Franz Kafka Prize, international literary award, in 2001. He was also the recipient of the National Medal of Arts from the White House.

Roth was also the author of The Plot Against America, an alternate history book that was made into a television series by HBO. Philip was born in Newark, New Jersey and that town would become a frequent location of his fiction. He was born in 1933 and grew up in Jersey. He would attend Rutgers University and Bucknell University where he earned a B.A. in English. He would then go to the University of Chicago where he earned an M.A. in English literature. Roth passed away in 2018.

Publication Order of American Trilogy Books

Publication Order of David Kepesh Books

Publication Order of Nathan Zuckerman Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

Publication Order of Short Story Collections

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

If You Like Philip Roth Books, You’ll Love…

• Cormac McCarthy
• John Updike
• William Faulkner

The Plot Against America is Roth’s alternate history that tells of a time where Franklin D. Roosevelt lost the 1940 presidential election to Charles A. Lindbergh. The new president does not lead America into World War II like Roosevelt, but instead negotiates a cordial “understanding” with Adolf Hitler, while the new government embarks on a program of folksy anti-Semitism. The story follows a boy growing up in Newark who finds that his life and those of his families are being ruined by the changing political landscape.

American Pastoral is the first book in Roth’s American trilogy. The story tells of an American named Seymour “Swede” Levov and his incredible rise and fall. He is a hard worker and the inheritor of his father’s Newark glove factory, but he finds his life turned upside down in the turbulent 1960s. Swede is a private, well-intentioned man who gets swept up in history.