In American Pastoral, Philip Roth gives us a novel of unqualified greatness
that is an elegy for all the twentieth century's promises of prosperity,
civic order, and domestic bliss. Roth's protagonist is Seymour 'Swede'
Levov - a legendary high school athlete, a devoted family man, a hard
worker, the prosperous inheritor of his father's Newark glove factory -
comes of age in thriving, triumphant post-war America. And then one day in
1968, Swede's beautiful American luck deserts him. For Swede's adored
daughter, Merry, has grown from a loving, quick-witted girl into a sullen,
fanatical teenager - a teenager capable of an outlandishly savage act of
political terrorism. And overnight Swede is wrenched out of the longed-for
American pastoral and into the indigenous American berserk. Compulsively
readable, propelled by sorrow, rage, and a deep compassion for its
characters, this is Roth's masterpiece.