{"product_id":"9780307454881","title":"The Dying Animal","description":"\u003ci\u003eNo matter how much you know, no matter how much you think, no matter how much you plot and you connive and you plan, you’re not superior to sex.\u003c\/i\u003e  With these words our most unflaggingly energetic and morally serious novelist launches perhaps his fiercest book.  The speaker is David Kepesh, white-haired and over sixty, an eminent cultural critic and star lecturer at a New York college–as well as an articulate propagandist of the sexual revolution. For years he has made a practice of sleeping with adventurous female students while maintaining an aesthete’s critical distance. But now that distance has been annihilated.   \u003cbr\u003eThe agency of Kepesh’s undoing is Consuela Castillo, the decorous and humblingly beautiful 24-year-old daughter of Cuban exiles. When he becomes involved with her, Kepesh finds himself dragged–helplessly, bitterly, furiously–into the quagmire of sexual jealousy and loss. In chronicling this descent, Philip Roth performs a breathtaking set of variations on the themes of eros and mortality, license and repression, selfishness and sacrifice. \u003ci\u003eThe Dying Animal\u003c\/i\u003e is a burning coal of a book, filled with intellectual heat and not a little danger.\u003cp\u003eAuthor Biography: In the 1990s Philip Roth won America's four major literary awards in succession: the National Book Critics Circle Award for \u003ci\u003ePatrimony\u003c\/i\u003e (1991), the PEN\/Faulkner Award for \u003ci\u003eOperation Shylock\u003c\/i\u003e (1993), the National Book Award for \u003ci\u003eSabbath's Theater\u003c\/i\u003e (1995), and the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for \u003ci\u003eAmerican Pastoral\u003c\/i\u003e (1997). He won the Ambassador Book Award of the English-Speaking Union for \u003ci\u003eI Married a Communist\u003c\/i\u003e (1998); in the same year he received the National Medal of Arts at the White House. Previously he won the National Book Critics Circle Award for \u003ci\u003eThe Counterlife\u003c\/i\u003e (1986) and the National Book Award for his first book, \u003ci\u003eGoodbye, Columbus\u003c\/i\u003e (1959). In 2000 he published \u003ci\u003eThe Human Stain\u003c\/i\u003e, concluding a trilogy that depicts the ideological ethos of postwar America. For \u003ci\u003eThe Human Stain\u003c\/i\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eRoth received his second PEN\/Faulkner Award as well as Britain's W. H. Smith Award for the Best Book of the Year. In 2001 he received the highest award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Gold Medal in fiction, given every six years \"for the entire work of the recipient.\"  \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47024180527344,"sku":"9780307454881","price":12.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780307454881_p0.jpg?v=1763672946","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780307454881","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}