Philip Roth: The Dying Animal, Kartoniert / Broschiert

Kurzbeschreibung

Das geordnete Leben von David Kepesh, dem 60-jährigen, gestandenen Kulturkritiker und Lehrer, gerät aus den Fugen, als er Consuela Castillo, der 24-jährigen Tochter eines reichen Exil-Kubaners begegnet. Immer hatte er sich schützen können, doch nun im Alter verfällt er einer stark von Eifersucht geprägten sexuellen Besessenheit. 'This is a vicious, furious book, unapologetically not of this age - it is also horribly funny and unflinchingly honest' New Statesman

Beschreibung

'No matter how much you know, no matter how much you think, no matter how much you plot and you connive and you plan, you're not superior to sex'

With these words America's most unflaggingly energetic and morally serious novelist launches perhaps his fiercest book. The speaker is David Kepesh, white-haired and over sixty, an eminent TV culture critic and star lecturer at a New York college - as well as an articulate propagandist of the sexual revolution. For years he has made a practice of sleeping with adventurous female students while maintaining an aesthete's critical distance. But now that distance has been annihilated.

The agency of Kepesh's undoing is Consuela Castillo, the decorous, humblingly beautiful twenty-four-year-old daughter of Cuban exiles. When he becomes involved with her, Kepesh finds himself dragged helplessly into the quagmire of sexual jealousy and loss. In chronicling the themes of eros and mortality, licence and repression, freedom and sacrifice. The Dying Animal is a burning coal of a book, filled with intellectual heat and not a little danger.

Rezension

"A fierce, compacted, sometimes brutal meditation on the passing of time and the meaning of freedom" David Lodge Daily Telegraph 20020614

Klappentext

'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. 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.