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Philip Roth was born in Newark, New Jersey, on 19 March 1933, and Newark runs through almost everything he wrote. His first book, Goodbye, Columbus (1959), won the National Book Award in 1960. Ten years later Portnoy's Complaint, a novel spoken from a psychoanalyst's couch, became his biggest success and his most controversial book. He invented a novelist alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman, in The Ghost Writer (1979), and in Operation Shylock (1993) put a character called Philip Roth into the book alongside an impostor with the same name. American Pastoral won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998. He stopped writing fiction after Nemesis (2010) and died in Manhattan on 22 May 2018, aged 85. The ten writers below share his material: family, sex, Jewishness, history, and the argument between a life and the books made out of it.
By Lisanne Swart · 10 authors · Jewish-American fiction · Alter egos · Updated October 2026
Quick answer
The closest matches to Philip Roth are Saul Bellow, whose Herzog (1964) is another comic, furious Jewish-American mind talking to itself, Bernard Malamud, often read as a model for the reclusive writer E. I. Lonoff in The Ghost Writer, and John Updike, whose four Rabbit novels follow one American man through four decades. Further down is a novelist who wrote a version of Roth into her own book.
10 authors like Philip Roth
Where to start if you loved Philip Roth
If you want the mind talking, read Saul Bellow.
Herzog: a professor writing letters he never sends.
If you want Zuckerman's other side, read Lisa Halliday.
Asymmetry: the young woman in a famous writer's life.
If you want it from Communist Europe, read Milan Kundera.
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting: sex, jokes and history in occupied Prague.
If you want it shorter and sadder, read Bernard Malamud.
The Assistant: a Brooklyn grocer and the drifter who robs him.
If you have only read Portnoy's Complaint, read Roth's American Pastoral (1997).
Nathan Zuckerman tells the story of Swede Levov, a Newark glove manufacturer whose daughter sets off a bomb in 1968; it won the Pulitzer Prize.
Frequently asked questions about authors like Philip Roth
Who writes like Philip Roth?
Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud and John Updike are his closest contemporaries. Gary Shteyngart writes the comic Jewish son a generation later, and Lisa Halliday's Asymmetry (2018) answers Roth from a woman's side.
What should I read after American Pastoral?
Roth's I Married a Communist (1998) and The Human Stain (2000) complete the trilogy narrated by Nathan Zuckerman. For another writer, try John Updike's Rabbit Is Rich (1981).
Which Philip Roth book should I read first?
Goodbye, Columbus (1959) is short and shows where he started. American Pastoral (1997) and The Plot Against America (2004) are his most widely read later novels.
Is Philip Roth like Saul Bellow?
Both are Jewish-American novelists whose narrators argue, joke and think aloud. Bellow, born in 1915, is the older writer and won the Nobel Prize in 1976; Roth never won it.
Did Philip Roth win the Nobel Prize?
No. He won the Pulitzer Prize for American Pastoral, two National Book Awards and the Man Booker International Prize in 2011, but never the Nobel.
Is there a biography of Philip Roth?
Blake Bailey's authorised Philip Roth: The Biography (2021) was withdrawn by W. W. Norton after allegations of sexual assault against Bailey, and later reissued by Skyhorse. Steven Zipperstein's Philip Roth: Stung by Life appeared in 2025.
Sources
- Philip Roth — Wikipedia
- Milan Kundera — Wikipedia
- Aharon Appelfeld — Wikipedia
- Lisa Halliday — Wikipedia
List last reviewed 31 October 2026.
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