Author Philip Roth says "Goodbye" to writing

US-BOOKS-PHILIPROTH:Author Philip Roth says "Goodbye" to writing

(Reuters) - Seminal American novelist Philip Roth is retiring from writing, his publisher Houghton Mifflin said on Friday.

The "American Pastoral" author slipped his retirement announcement under the radar in an interview with French magazine Les Inrocks last month.

"He told me it was true," Lori Glazer, Houghton Mifflin's vice president and executive director of publicity, told Reuters on Friday.

Roth, 79, whose most famous works includes "Goodbye, Columbus" and "Portnoy's Complaint," has never won the Nobel Prize for Literature despite his name often coming up as a leading contender for the award.

(Reporting By Eric Kelsey in Los Angeles, Editing by Jill Serjeant and Jan Paschal)

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