American Pastoral

Philip Roth crafts a devastating portrait of a nation’s broken promise—and one man’s fall from the American dream into chaos.

Seymour "Swede" Levov has everything: a flawless athletic legacy, a beauty queen wife, a thriving family business, and a picture-perfect home in postwar suburban New Jersey. To outsiders, his life embodies the prosperity and peace of the American mid-century ideal. But in 1968, that illusion shatters when his beloved daughter, Merry, commits a shocking act of political violence that rips his family—and his identity—apart.

As Swede confronts the wreckage of his once-perfect world, American Pastoral becomes more than a story of personal tragedy—it is an elegy for a country coming undone. With piercing insight, Roth explores how history invades the home, how ideals corrode under pressure, and how the American dream can curdle into nightmare.

Profound, compulsively readable, and one of Roth’s most powerful works, American Pastoral is a masterclass in sorrow, rage, and the deep complexities of love and loss in turbulent times.