As a student in college, David Kepesh styles himself 'a rake among
scholars, a scholar among rakes'. Little does he realise how prophetic this
motto will be - or how damning. For as Philip Roth follows Kepesh from the
domesticity of his childhood into the vast wilderness of erotic
possibility, from a menage troisin London to the throes of loneliness in
New York, he creates a supremely intelligent, affecting and often hilarious
novel about the dilemma of pleasure- where we seek it; why we flee it; and
how we struggle to make a truce between dignity and desire.