Philip Roth's award-winning first book instantly established its author's
reputation as a writer of explosive wit, merciless insight and a fierce
compassion for even the most self-deluding of his characters. GOODBYE,
COLOMBUS is the story of Neil Klugman and pretty, spirited Brenda Patimkin,
he of poor Newark, she of suburban Short Hills, who meet one summer break
and dive into an affair that is as much about social class and suspicion as
it is about love.The novella is accompanied by five short stories that
range in tone from the iconoclastic to the astonishingly tender and that
illuminate the subterranean conflicts between parents and children and
friends and neighbours in the American Jewish diaspora.