Time calls Philip Roth "the uncontested master of comic irony." He is a best-seller and the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, the National Book Award, and the Pulitzer Prize in fiction. The Counterlife brings back Roth's most notorious character, the novelist Nathan Zuckerman. Now Nathan's married brother, Henry the dentist, is suffering from impotence as a result of taking heart medication—and he's willing to risk his life in a dangerous operation just to regain his sexual prowess in order to satisfy the needs of his office assistant.