Philip Roth's many honors testify to his importance. He won awards for many of his individual novels, including two National Book Awards, two National Book Critics Circle Awards, three PEN/Faulkner awards, and a Pulitzer Prize. He also won awards for the body of his work, including an award for Jewish Cultural Achievement in the Arts, the gold medal for fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the National Book Foundation award for distinguished contribution to American letters, the PEN/Nabokov award for lifetime achievement, and the PEN/Bellow award for Achievement in American Fiction.