His life in dates

HERE are key dates in the life of American writer Philip Roth, who died on Tuesday aged 85.

> March 19, 1933: Roth is born in Newark, New Jersey.

> 1959: He publishes a collection of short stories, Goodbye, Columbus, that receives the prestigious US National Book Award the following year. He goes on to win a host of literary prizes over his career.

> 1959: Marries Margaret Martinson, whom he divorces four years later. His second marriage is to British actress Claire Bloom (1990-1995), with whom he had a long relationship before they married.

> 1969: Publishes the sexually explicit Portnoy’s Complaint ,his first great success.

> 1979: Release of The Ghost Writer, the first of a series of novels narrated by his alter ego character, Nathan Zuckerman.

> 1998: Roth is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for American Pastoral (1997).

> 2005: Becomes one of the few living writers to have his collected works published by the Library of America in its classic American writing category.

> 2010: Release of his last novel, Nemesis, about a polio epidemic in 1944.

> 2011: He receives the Man Booker International Prize for lifetime achievement in fiction.

> 2012: Roth announces that he will stop writing fiction. — AFP