Sabbath's Theater - A Novel

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD One of The Atlantic 's Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Philip Roth at the peak of his powers, Sabbath's Theater is a comic creation of epic proportions, and Mickey Sabbath an aging, raging powerhouse of a gargantuan hero. At sixty-four Mickey Sabbath is still defiantly antagonistic and exceedingly libidinous. Sabbath's Theater tells Mickey's story in the wake of the death of his mistress, an erotic free spirit whose adulterous daring exceeds even his own. Once a scandalously inventive puppeteer, Mickey is now besieged by ghosts--of his mother, his beloved brother, his vanished first wife, his mistress of thirteen years. Bereft and grieving, he embarks on a turbulent journey back into his past, one that brings him to the brink of madness and extinction. But no matter how ardently he courts death, he is too exuberantly alive to succeed at dying.