Philip Roth, celebrated author whose novels explored Jewish identity, dies aged 85

Jewish novelist Philip Roth has died aged 85.

Roth’s works included Portnoy’s Complaint (1969), Sabbath’s Theatre (1995), American Pastoral (1997) and I Married a Communist (1998), winning the Pulitzer Prize For Fiction, the Man Booker International Prize, and America’s National Book Award.

Mr Roth died on Tuesday night in Manhattan, of congestive heart failure.

Philip Roth was born in Newark in 1933, to Herman and Bess Roth, Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe.

He was often described as a "Jewish-American" author but rejected the term, saying: “The epithet American-Jewish writer has no meaning for me. If I’m not an American, I’m nothing.”

Yet despite that disclaimer, many of his most famous novels were based on Jewish characters and Jewish themes.

Perhaps his best-known work, Portnoy’s Complaint, was described as the monologue of "a lust-ridden, mother-addicted young Jewish bachelor."

Nine of his novels depict author Nathan Zuckerman, whom many readers saw an an alter ego for Mr Roth

His 2004 novel, The Plot Against America, depicted an alternate timeline where American Jews suffer after Charles Lindbergh, the aviator and Nazi sympathiser, is elected US President in 1940.

Despite Jewish themes appearing so prominently in his work, Mr Roth had an uneasy relationship with some American Jews for much of his career.

Gershon Scholem, the philosopher and historian, described Portnoy’s Complaint as a book "for which all anti-Semites have been praying" and said it was more damaging to Jews than the infamous forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Blake Bailey, Mr Roth's biographer, told BBC Radio Four's Today programme on Wednesday: "It is ironic that he got this reputation as a self-hating Jew."

"Philip despised antisemitism in all its forms and he himself loved Jews, he loved growing up in a Jewish neighbourhood. He didn't have much time for the religious side of it, but everything else was just great," he said.

Click below to read a retrospective on Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint