Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction Philip Roth's prize-winning first book instantly established its author's reputation as a writer of explosive wit, merciless insight and humane compassion for even the most self-deluding of his characters. Goodbye, Columbus is the story of Neil Klugman and pretty, spirited Brenda Patimkin, he of poor Newark, she of suburban Short Hills, who meet one summer and fall into an affair that is as much about social class and suspicion as it is about love. The novella is accompanied by five short stories - sometimes iconoclastic, sometimes elegiac - that crackle with irreverent originality and display Roth's blazing early talent.