The Dying Animal Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

The Dying Animal Book

The Dying Animal is the latest addition to Philip Roth's already considerable and highly celebrated oeuvre. The protagonist is David Kepesh, a recurring protagonist in Roth's work, having been introduced first in the Kafkaesque 1972 novella, The Breast, and again in The Professor of Desire (1979). Kepesh, now a 70-year-old arts critic and lecturer in critical theory, is a sexual adventurer, who feels himself liberated from marriage, children and old school sexual mores by the 1960s sexual revolution, and uses his celebrity and intellectual reputation to seduce the young women that he tutors. Written in the form of a conversational confession, Roth has Kepesh introduce the method of his sexual conquests and then the foil to his method, the beautiful, mannered and busty Consuela Castillo. So begins a description of a descent into the madness of love; "crazy distortions of longing, doting, possessiveness ... this need, this derangement. Will it ever stop?" . What begins as a chronology of sexual conquest becomes an exquisite meditation on the destructive and addictive nature of love and lust. Notions of social freedom, and sexual emancipation are explored as Kepesh, who for so long has considered himself a free animal, finds himself caged in by his obsession. His journey of sexual discovery becomes one of self-discovery, and as his life journey nears its close he also begins to realise in himself and those around him, "the dying animal" (from Yeats' poem "Sailing to Byzantium"),a different beast to the sexual animal yet still entwined with it through shared flesh. This is a sexually candid novel, a brave and daring one, a novel that does not blink in the admission that so many of our actions are motivated by the sexual. In this it is reminiscent of the writings of Henry Miller, which are mentioned among the many literary references that populate this book. Every line of Roth's prose brings a desire to read the next; it is brilliantly written, and like the Yeats poem from which it draws inspiration, it is open to much interpretation. --Iain Robinson Read More

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  • Amazon

    David Kepesh, white haired and over sixty, is an eminent TV culture critic and star lecturer at a New York college. He meets Consuela Castillo, a well-mannered student of twenty-four, who promptly puts his life into erotic disorder. But, the lighthearted erotic tale with which he began evolves into a poignant, tragic story of love and loss.

  • Foyles

    'This is a vicious, furious book, unapologetically not of this age - it is also horribly funny and unflinchingly honest' New StatesmanDavid Kepesh, white-haired, and now in his sixties, is an eminent cultural critic on NPR radio and a formidable lecturer at a New York college. For years he's been casually, almost habitually, sleeping with the more spirited of his female students, though with an aesthete's critical distance. But now he's met Consuela Castillo, a twenty-four-year-old Cuban student of such head-turning beauty, that Kapesh finds himself dragged helplessly into a quagmire of sexual jealousy and loss.The Dying Animal is a virtuoso performance from Philip Roth, following Kapesh through the tumult of erotic lust and the search for freedom, shackled by a mortal human body.

  • BookDepository

    The Dying Animal : Paperback : Vintage Publishing : 9780099422693 : : 01 Oct 2006 : 'This is a vicious, furious book, unapologetically not of this age - it is also horribly funny and unflinchingly honest' New Statesman David Kepesh, white-haired, and now in his sixties, is an eminent cultural critic on NPR radio and a formidable lecturer at a New York college.

  • ASDA

    David Kepesh white haired and over sixty is an eminent TV culture critic and star lecturer at a New York college. He meets Consuela Castillo a well-mannered student of twenty-four who promptly puts his life into erotic disorder. But the lighthearted erotic tale with which he began evolves into a poignant tragic story of love and loss.

  • 0099422697
  • 9780099422693
  • Philip Roth
  • 5 April 2002
  • Vintage
  • Paperback (Book)
  • 176
  • New edition
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