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Nemesis

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Nemesis

By: Philip Roth
Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris
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It's the sweltering summer of 1944, and Newark is in the grip of a terrifying epidemic.

Decent, athletic twenty-three year old playground director Bucky Cantor is devoted to his charges and ashamed with himself because his weak eyes have excluded him from serving in the war alongside his contemporaries. As polio begins to ravage Bucky's playground - child by helpless child - Roth leads us through every emotion such a pestilence can breed: the fear, the panic, the anger, the bewilderment, the suffering and the pain.

'The genius of Philip Roth...back at his imperious best in this heartbreaking tale... The eloquence of Roth's storytelling makes Nemesis one of his most haunting works' Daily Mail

'Cantor is one of Roth's best creations and the atmosphere of terror is masterfully fashioned' Sunday Telegraph

'Very fine, very unsettling' Douglas Kennedy, The Times

©2010 Philip Roth (P)2024 Penguin Audio

 Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Jewish Jewish Heritage Literary Fiction World Literature
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Critic reviews

Heart-wrenchingly powerful
A mesmerically imagined work of realism... A shocking gem... A masterclass in literature and life, that reaches into the pits of the dead
What makes Roth such an important novelist is the effortless way he brings together the trivial and the profoundly serious
A masterful performance
Nemesis is an artfully constructed suspenseful novel with a cunning twist (J.M. Coetzee)
The genius of Philip Roth...back at his imperious best in this heartbreaking tale... The eloquence of Roth's storytelling makes Nemesis one of his most haunting works
Cantor is one of Roth's best creations and the atmosphere of terror is masterfully fashioned (Tibor Fischer)
Very fine, very unsettling (Douglas Kennedy)
A perfectly proportioned Greek tragedy played out against the background of the polio epidemic that swept Newark, New Jersey, during the summer of 1944 (Adrian Turpin)
Outstanding
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