The end is nigh

摘要

Aged 73, Philip Roth is understandably absorbed with death. Yet in his ap-pealingly modest 27th novel, "Everyman", Mr Roth is more concerned with what usually precedes it: the humiliating rebellions of the body, that insidious conversion of lifelong friend to foe. This is a big subject for a small book. Everyman is, for Mr Roth, a deliberately stock character: a Jew from New Jersey with three failed marriages, two of whose three children despise him.