Mickey Sabbath is a comic creation of epic proportions, and at sixty-four, he is still defiantly antagonistic and exceedingly libidinous. Sex is both an obsession and a principle, serving as an instrument of perpetual misrule in his daily existence.

Following the death of his long-time mistress—a free-spirited woman with a taste for the impermissible that matches his own—Sabbath embarks on a turbulent journey into his past. Bereft and grieving, tormented by the ghosts of those who loved and hated him, he contrives a series of farcical disasters that take him to the brink of madness and extinction.

Sabbath's Theater is Philip Roth at the peak of his powers, delivering a narrative that is both hilarious and profoundly moving.