Philip Roth, influential giant of 20th-century literature, who explored Jewish-American heritage, politics and male sexuality in over 30 novels, has died aged 85. 

He was among greatest writers never to win the Nobel Prize. But he received virtually every other literary honor, including two National Book Awards, two National Book Critics Circle prizes and, in 1998, the Pulitzer for "American Pastoral."

He was in his 20s when he won his first award and awed critics and fellow writers by producing some of his most acclaimed novels in his 60s and 70s, including "The Human Stain" and "Sabbath's Theater," a savage narrative of lust and mortality he considered his finest work.

He identified himself as an American writer, not a Jewish one, but for Roth the American experience and the Jewish experience were often the same.

The New York Times reported that a close friend of Roth's said he had died of heart failure. 

 
• infographics
 
• seminal
 
• american
 
• novelist
 
• philip
 
• roth
 
• dies