Doctorow, E(dgar) L(awrence) (1931– )

US novelist. He achieved critical and commercial success with his third novel, The Book of Daniel (1971), the story of the Rosenberg spy case told by their fictional son, which established Doctorow as an imaginative and experimental revisionist of American history. It was followed by his best-seller, Ragtime (1975; filmed 1981), which dramatized the Jazz Age. He was awarded the PEN/Faulkner award for his Civil War novel The March (2005).

His other novels include Loon Lake (1980), a montage narrative set in 1936; World's Fair (1985), about Jewish boyhood in 1930s New York; Billy Bathgate (1989), the story of a child apprenticed to the gangster Dutch Schultz; and The Waterworks (1994), a detective story set in New York. Later novels include Waterworks (2001) and Reporting the Universe (2003).

He was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 1998.