Nemesis

An incredible new novel from the indefatigable Philip Roth: certain to be acclaimed as one of his best ever. Set in Newark, New Jersey in the summer of 1944, Nemesis follows the dilemmas of Bucky Cantor, a young playground director, as a polio epidemic begins to take hold of a closely-knit community and its children. In 'the stifling heat of equatorial Newark', a terrifying epidemic is raging, threatening the children of the New Jersey city with maiming, paralysis, life-long disability, even death. This is the startling and surprising theme of Roth's wrenching new book: a wartime polio epidemic in the summer of 1944 and the effect it has on a closely-knit, family-oriented Newark community and its children. At the centre of Nemesis is a vigorous, dutiful, twenty-three-year old playground director, Bucky Cantor, a javelin thrower and a weightlifter, who is devoted to his charges and disappointed with himself because his weak eyes have excluded him from serving in the war alongside his contemporaries.