American novelist Philip Roth, one of the world's most revered authors, is retiring from writing, his publisher, Houghton Mifflin, has said.
The American Pastoral author slipped his retirement announcement under the radar in an interview with French magazine Les Inrocks last month.
"To tell you the truth, I'm done," Roth was quoted as telling the magazine.
"Nemesis will be my last book," he said of his 2010 short novel.
Roth (79) is the author of more than 25 novels in a career spanning more than 50 years. He won the Pulitzer Prize for American Pastoral in 1997 and two National Book Awards, for Goodbye Columbus and Sabbath's Theater.
Roth however said he had always found writing difficult and now wanted nothing more to do with reading, writing or talking about books.
He said that at the age of 74, he started rereading all his favourite novels by authors including Ernest Hemingway, Ivan Turgenev and Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and then reread all his own novels.
"I wanted to see whether I had wasted my time writing," he explained. - (Reuters)