His prose is immaculate yet curiously plain and unostentatious, as natural as breathing. It’s always the story that’s in your face, never the style. Al Alvarez

Nowadays, anybody can say or write almost anything, even in prim Sunday newspapers or what used to be called ‘mixed company’. And, consequently, the requirement of outrage becomes more difficult to meet. Yet [Roth] meets it. Frank Kermode, reviewing Sabbath’s Theater

It is worth mentioning what a readable writer Roth is. Bellow’s exquisiteness often comes at the price of narrative drive. But Roth, though every bit as serious a writer, has always had the knack of drawing his reader along. Readability in his hands seems to involve a deeper skill. Benjamin Markovits

Those recent books just knocked me on my ass. To be in his sixties, making work that is so strong, so full of revelations about love and emotional pain, that’s the way to live your artistic life. Sustain, sustain, sustain. Bruce Springsteen, on being asked to name the greatest living American

The word genius doesn’t seem excessive ... In its sweep and chutzpah, it ranks with his great trilogy of the late 1990s. Isn’t it time they gave him the Nobel? Blake Morrison, reviewing The Plot Against America

He is without doubt the greatest novelist writing in English today. There are times when his prose just ignites and roars into life like a match to a boiler. It’s literally breathtaking. You are left thinking, this is something, this is really something ... But it has now become apparent to many admirers, male and female, that there is a dark distaste for women, a repugnance that can only be described by the word misogyny. Which is bizarre, because Roth, for all his rages, can be the most empathetic, compassionate and humane of observers.

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