The Professor of Desire (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780063499898)

"Ranks among the major achievements in the literature of our time." --Village Voice

"A thoughtful ... elegant novel.... A fine display of literary skills." --New York Times Book Review

Philip Roth's profound and often hilarious novel--the central book in Roth's Kepesh trilogy--about where we seek pleasure and why we flee it.
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As a student in college, David Kepesh styles himself "a rake among scholars, a scholar among rakes." Little does he realize how prophetic his motto will be--or how damning. For as Roth follows Kepesh from the domesticity of childhood into the vast wilderness of erotic possibility, from a ménage á trois in London to the throes of loneliness in New York, Kapesh confronts the central dilemma of pleasure: how to make a truce between dignity and desire; and how to survive the ordeal of an unhallowed existence.