The Counterlife

'Roth is a comic genius... this book [is] wonderfully sharp, worryingly intense' - Martin Amis Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, an ambitious and intricate novel from the creator of Nathan Zuckerman. The Counterlife is about people living their dreams of renewal and escape , some of them going so far as to risk their lives to alter their destinies. Wherever they find themselves, the characters of The Counterlife are tempted by the prospect of an alternative existence. Illuminating these lives in free-fall and transformation is the acrobatic mind of novelist Nathan Zuckerman. His is the sceptical, enveloping intelligence that calculates the price that's paid in the struggle to change personal fortune and reshape history, whether in a dentist's office in suburban New Jersey; a tradition-bound English Village in Gloucestershire; a church in London's West End; or in a tiny desert settlement in Israel's occupied West Bank. Shot through with head-turning dualities, as daring as it is moving, The Counterlife reinvents the novel with style, wit and grace.