The Dying Animal, (Paperback)

<p><b>"[A] disturbing masterpiece." <i> --New York Review of Books</i></b></p><p><b>"Powerful...Roth's narrator newly illuminates the American body, the American soul, the life of loving and the love of life that has always been so all-consuming in his fiction."<i> -- Chicago Tribune</i></b></p><p><b>The final, incendiary Kepesh novel and the unforgettable story of an affair between a star lecturer at a New York college and the beautiful daughter of Cuban exiles--and the quagmire of sexual jealousy and loss that ensues.</b></p><p><i>No matter how much you know, no matter how much you think, no matter how much you plot and you connive and you plan, you're not superior to sex.</i> With these words our most unflaggingly energetic and morally serious novelist launches perhaps his fiercest book. The speaker is David Kepesh, white-haired and over sixty, an eminent cultural critic and star lecturer at a New York college--as well as an articulate propagandist of the sexual revolution. For years he has made a practice of sleeping with adventurous female students while maintaining an aesthete's critical distance. But now that distance has been annihilated.</p><p>The agency of Kepesh's undoing is Consuela Castillo, the decorous and humblingly beautiful 24-year-old daughter of Cuban exiles. When he becomes involved with her, Kepesh finds himself dragged--helplessly, bitterly, furiously--into jealousy and loss. In chronicling this descent, Philip Roth performs a breathtaking set of variations on the themes of eros and mortality, license and repression, selfishness and sacrifice. <i>The Dying Animal</i> is a burning coal of a book, filled with intellectual heat and not a little danger.</p>

• The Dying Animal, (Paperback)
• Author: Mariner Books Classics
• ISBN: 9780063499393
• Format: Paperback
• Publication Date: 2026-12-15
• Page Count: 144