American Novelist Philip Roth, Author Of 'Portnoy's Complaint,' Dies At 85
Roth, one of the most influential novelists of the later part of the 20th Century, is the author of American Pastoral, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and 1969's Portnoy's Complaint.
Updated at 12:50 a.m. ET
Philip Roth, whose novel American Pastoral won a Pulitzer in 1998 but who was best-known for the controversial and explicit 1969 Portnoy's Complaint, has died at age 85.
Roth's biographer Blake Bailey, who confirmed his death to NPR, says the author was surrounded by friends and family.
Roth was born in Newark, N.J., on March 19, 1933, and began a literary career in college. After briefly attending Rutgers University, he went to Bucknell University, where he, which featured some of his early short stories,
