Books › Sabbath's Theater
Sabbath's Theater
653 pages
A torrential, darkly hilarious howl of grief and obscenity from a man refusing to go quietly into old age.
What it feels like
Reading this novel is like being trapped in a room with a brilliant, grieving, and utterly shameless maniac. The experience is a torrential outpouring of rage, lust, and sorrow, propelled by prose that is both fiercely articulate and unapologetically vulgar. It feels chaotic and deeply uncomfortable, dragging you through the muck of human depravity while exposing the sharp, agonizing sting of mortality. Yet, beneath the relentless obscenity and manic energy lies a profound, elegiac sadness that vibrates with dark, farcical humor. This is a demanding, abrasive read that requires surrender to its transgressive texture. It will thrill readers who crave fearless, psychologically complex literature and who find a strange, cathartic beauty in the unfiltered realities of the aging human animal.
- Mood
- manic
- grief-stricken
- chaotic
- unapologetic
- Tone
- savage
- profane
- elegiac
- darkly comic
- defiant
- Pace
- propulsive
- Themes
- mortality and aging · sexual transgression · the grotesque body · grief and memory · defiance of social norms
- The writing
- Torrential, fiercely articulate, and unapologetically vulgar, driven by long, rhythmic sentences that pulse with rage and dark humor.
- The arc
- A manic, grief-fueled spiral from defiant obscenity into a profound, exhausted confrontation with mortality and the ghosts of the past.
- Who it's for
- Readers who appreciate transgressive, psychologically complex character studies and aren't afraid of deeply unlikable, profane protagonists.
Content notes
- explicit sexual content
- grief and bereavement
- misogyny
- suicidal ideation
- profanity
About the book
"As much as he wants to be the Marquis de Sade, he is not. As much as he wants to be seventeen, he is not. As much as he wants to be dead, he is not. He is Mickey Sabbath, the aging, raging powerhouse whose savage effrontery and mocking audacity are at the heart of Philip Roth's new novel.".
"Once a scandalously inventive puppeteer, Sabbath at sixty-four is still defiantly antagonistic and exceedingly libidinous. But after the death of his long-time mistress - an erotic free spirit whose adulterous daring exceeds even his own - Sabbath embarks on a turbulent journey into his past. Bereft and grieving, besieged by the ghosts of those who loved and hated him most, he contrives a succession of farcical disasters that take him to the brink of madness and extinction."--BOOK JACKET.
Description from Open Library.
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