Philip Roth recounts the final two years of his elderly father Herman Roth's life in Elizabeth, New Jersey, from the 1989 diagnosis of a brain tumor through a decision against surgery, a swallowing crisis, and his death, interwoven with Newark childhood stories, the family shaving mug, and Roth's own emergency heart bypass during the same period.
Books mentioned in Patrimony: A True Story (4)
This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen by Tadeusz Borowski: “my Hunter literature class had just been reading a book about Auschwitz—Tadeusz Borowski's This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen”
Into That Darkness by Gitta Sereny: “and another about Treblinka—Gitta Sereny's Into That Darkness”
Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi: “made me think of that chapter in Survival in Auschwitz in which Primo Levi describes the forbidden bartering and bargaining among the prisoners”
The Facts by Philip Roth: “The piece, which, as 'Safe at Home,' became the opening chapter of The Facts, described my Newark neighborhood...”