The Breast

Book 0: Vintage International

by Philip Roth

Genres: Jewish Fiction

Synopsis

Like a latter-day Gregor Samsa, Professor David Kepesh wakes up one morning to find that he has been transformed. But where Kafka's protagonist turned into a giant beetle, the narrator of Philip Roth's richly conceived fantasy has become a 155-pound female breast. What follows is a deliriously funny yet touching exploration of the full implications of Kepesh's metamorphosis-a daring, heretical book that brings us face to face with the intrinsic strangeness of sex and subjectivity.

"The Breast is terrific . . . inventive and sane and very funny. The trick which is the heart of the book is brilliant . . . and rich with meaning."-John Gardner, The New York Times Book Review

"Hilarious, serious, visionary, logical, sexual-philosophical; the ending amazes-the joke takes three steps beyond savagery and satire and turns into a sublimeness of pity. One knows when one is reading something that will permanently enter the culture."-Cynthia Ozick

Release date: September 21, 2022

Publisher: Vintage

Print pages: 96