"Goodbye Columbus" (1959) is the first book by the famous American prose writer Philip Roth. The book is about the problems and complexes of assimilated Jews, second- or third-generation Americans who left their parental ethnic ghetto to go to university, master traditional “white” professions and live in wealthy suburbs. Being in conflict with themselves and with the world, the heroes of Roth's stories wander around America in search of a new identity, which they cannot find. The collection brought Roth readership and critical recognition. In 1960, he received the National Book Award, and with it his reputation as a talented and promising young prose writer. At the same time, many representatives of the Jewish community saw in Roth a typical bearer of the complex of “Jewish self-hate” - a label that stuck to Roth for many years. Apparently, they were confused by the author's less than flattering portrayal of some of his characters. (Roth is believed to have responded to his critics by caricaturing them in Portnoy's Complaint.)