Sabbath's Theater

On the surface, Sabbath's Theater shares many sex-obsessed similarities to Portnoy’s Complaint (1969), as it describes a 64-year-old disgraced former puppeteer who journeys through a life filled with prostitutes, mistresses, and masturbation. But Philip Roth at this point was much more talented writer, and his novel rises to Shakespearean levels as it explores some of the most essential features of human life: love, death, human relationships, and what really matters at the end of our lives.