Giant of American literature, Philip Roth, dead at 85

NEW YORK: Philip Roth, a giant of US literature whose work explored what it meant to be American, male and Jewish, was a towering figure among 20th century novelists whose five-decade career won him legions of awards around the world.

He died on Tuesday in Manhattan of congestive heart failure, the Wylie Agency told AFP, only six years after he announced his retirement. He was 85. It marked the end of an extraordinary career for an author who found fame with the wildly graphic “Portnoy’s Complaint” in 1969 and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998 for “American Pastoral,” whose “Plot against America” found renewed significance under the Donald Trump presidency and published “Nemesis,” his final novel, in 2010.