American novelist. Growing up in New Jersey, the scene of many of his fiction, his stories and novels are often provocative and controversial, featuring Jewish characters. His first literary success was the short story collection Goodbye Columbus in 1959. He drew much attention and criticism with Portnoy’s Complaint, a satirical novel about a young Jew looking for his manhood in Gentile America. While he never achieved quite the same attention with his later novels, he has been quite prolific with over thirty novels to his name and has won numerous national and international awards including two National Book Awards for fiction.