Nemesis is the latest novel from Philip Roth, Pulitzer Prize winner and recipient of the 2011 Man Booker International Prize. Moving between the streets of Newark and a pristine summer camp high in the Poconos, Nemesis tenderly and startlingly depicts one man’s passage into personal disaster, the condition of childhood, and the painful effect that the wartime polio epidemic has on a closely-knit, family-oriented Newark community and its children.
Praise for Philip Roth’s Nemesis:
“Roth’s book has the elegance of a fable and the tragic inevitability of a Greek drama.”—The New Yorker
“An artfully constructed, suspenseful novel with a cunning twist towards the end.”—J. M. Coetzee, New York Review of Books
“Elegant…. Suffused with precise and painful tenderness…. Stands out for its warmth.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Painful and powerful…. Somberly but vividly, [Roth] recreates the panic and fear triggered by polio.” —USA Today
“A perfectly proportioned Greek tragedy played out against the background of the polio epidemic that swept Newark, New Jersey, during the summer of 1944.” —Financial Times
“Like a very well-executed O. Henry story…. A parable about the embrace of conscience. . . .and what its suffocating, life-denying consequences can be.” –Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
“Yet another small triumph from one of our native artists largest in spirit. And by small I mean in length of the book. . . . This dual portrait, of a neighborhood and of a man quite representative of the times when trouble struck his neighborhood with lethal force, gives this new novel a singular appeal.” —Chicago Tribune
Click to read more praise for Nemesis and to read an excerpt.
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