PHILIP ROTH INAUGURAL RECIPIENT OF SAUL BELLOW AWARD.

Last weekend I read Everyman by Philip Roth (Jonathan Cape) which my brother-in-law had loaned me and urged me to read.

Perhaps most accurately described as a novella as it only runs to 150 pages or so; I read it in one longish, enjoyable sitting.

Roth became the first three-time winner of the Pen/Faulkner prize for this moving and entertaining work which is about a retired New York ad man confronting ilnness and mortality in his retirement.

It is a stunning peice of writing, not without humour, and I warmly recommend it to all.

Author pic from the Wikipedia Philip Roth website.

Associated Press and most US media carry the story of Roth being Awarded the Saul Bellow Award which is made to a "distinguished living American author of fiction whose body of work in English posses qualities of excellence, ambition, and scale of achievement over a sustained career which place him or her in the highest rank of American literature."

Saul Bellow died in April 2005.