Goodbye, Columbus: and Five Short Stories

Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1956 First edition, first printing. Signed by Roth on front free endpaper. Publisher's black boards with titles in white and yellow lettering to spine; original gray dust jacket designed by Sanford Roth, brother of Philip Roth, with illustration of an orange fruit basket and a naked woman by a window to front panel, photo of the author taken by Sanford to rear panel. Near fine book with slight bump to bottom corner of front board and small patch of discoloration to rear board; very good price-clipped dust jacket with some toning to spine, light wear to edges and spine ends, and a bit of soiling to rear panel. Overall, an attractive copy. Goodbye, Columbus is a collection of short fiction writing by Philip Roth which earned the author literary repute as well as the 1960 National Book Award for Fiction. A humorous and somewhat derisive portrait of the lives of Jewish-Americans, Goodbye, Columbus contains a titular novella along with five short stories: "The Conversion of the Jews," "Defender of the Faith," "Epstein," "You Can't Tell a Man by the Song He Sings," and "Eli, the Fanatic." Each of the included pieces were previously published in The Paris Review, Commentary, and The New Yorker. Like many of his works, Goodbye, Columbus is semi-autobiographical in nature; a first generation American born to Jewish-Galician parents and raised in Newark, New Jersey, Roth's characters are often influenced by his friends and family and his fiction, like this text, is typically set in Newark.. First Edition. Hard Cover. Near Fine/Dust Jacket Included.