Structurally, Portnoy's Complaint is a continuous monologue by narrator Alexander Portnoy to Dr. Time included this novel in its ' TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.' Structure and themes In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Portnoy's Complaint 52nd on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. The novel tells the humorous monologue of 'a lust-ridden, mother-addicted young Jewish bachelor,' who confesses to his psychoanalyst in 'intimate, shameful detail, and coarse, abusive language.'

Its success turned Roth into a major celebrity, sparking a storm of controversy over its explicit and candid treatment of sexuality, including detailed depictions of masturbation using various props including a piece of liver. Philip Roth died on at the age of eighty-five having retired from writing six years previously.Portnoy's Complaint is a 1969 American novel by Philip Roth. Among other commendations he was the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, the International Man Booker Prize, twice the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Book Award, and presented with the National Medal of Arts and the National Humanities Medal by Presidents Clinton and Obama, respectively. Roth’s lasting contribution to literature was widely recognised throughout his lifetime, both in the US and abroad. Roth was the author of thirty-one books, including those that were to follow the fortunes of Nathan Zuckerman, and a fictional narrator named Philip Roth, through which he explored and gave voice to the complexities of the American experience in the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries. Ten years later, the publication of his fourth novel, Portnoy’s Complaint, brought Roth both critical and commercial success, firmly securing his reputation as one of America’s finest young writers.

In 1959, Roth published Goodbye, Columbus – a collection of stories, and a novella – for which he received the National Book Award.

After graduating from Weequahic High School in 1950, he attended Bucknell University, Pennsylvania and the University of Chicago, where he received a scholarship to complete his M.A. The second child of second-generation Americans, Bess and Herman Roth, Roth grew up in the largely Jewish community of Weequahic, a neighbourhood he was to return to time and again in his writing. Philip Roth was born in Newark, New Jersey on 19 March 1933.

Roth portnoy's complaint