 Cover of Vintage Classics reprint |
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| Author | Philip Roth |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Novella |
| Publisher | Vintage (reprint) |
| Publication date | 1972 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 96 |
| ISBN | ISBN 0679749012 ISBN 978-0679749011 |
| Followed by | The Professor of Desire |
The Breast (1972) is a novella by Philip Roth, in which the main character, David Kepesh, becomes a 155-pound breast. Throughout the book Kepesh fights with himself. Part of him wishes to give in to bodily desires, while the other part of him wants to be rational. Kepesh, a literature professor, compares his plight with that of fictional characters such as Gregor Samsa in Kafka's novella The Metamorphosis and Kovalyov in Nikolai Gogol's short story "The Nose". Throughout the novel, he describes the various sexual and physical feelings he has while people handle him, while initiating sex with his girlfriend, and while he is alone.
| Works by Philip Roth | |
|---|---|
| Fiction | |
| Goodbye, Columbus • Letting Go • When She Was Good • Portnoy's Complaint • Our Gang • The Great American Novel • My Life As a Man • Sabbath's Theater • Everyman | |
| Kepesh Novels | The Breast • The Professor of Desire • The Dying Animal |
| Zuckerman Novels | The Ghost Writer • Zuckerman Unbound • The Anatomy Lesson • The Prague Orgy • The Counterlife • American Pastoral • I Married a Communist • The Human Stain • Exit Ghost |
| Roth Novels | Deception • Operation Shylock • The Plot Against America |
| Non-fiction | |
| Memoirs | Patrimony • The Facts |
| On writing | Shop Talk • Reading Myself and Others |
| Collections | |
| Zuckerman Bound • A Philip Roth Reader | |
| Library of America | Novels and Stories 1959-1962 • Novels 1967-1972 • Novels 1973-1977 • Novels 1979-1985 |
