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The Plot Against America
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  • Published: 1 November 2015
  • ISBN: 9780099478560
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 400
  • RRP: $30.00
Categories:

The Plot Against America

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4 Jan 2011
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16 Mar 2023
Paperback
1 Nov 2015
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‘In his 2004 novel, The Plot Against America, Roth precisely described the sinister and chilling nightmare in which the United States now finds itself' Bernard-Henri Lévy

'He captures better than anyone the collision of public and private, the intrusion of history into the skin, the pores of every individual alive' Guardian

'Though on the morning after the election disbelief prevailed, especially among the pollsters, by the next everybody seemed to understand everything...'

When celebrity aviator, Charles A. Lindbergh, wins the 1940 presidential election on the slogan of 'America First', fear invades every Jewish household. Not only has Lindbergh blamed the Jews for pushing America towards war with Germany, he has negotiated an 'understanding' with the Nazis promising peace between the two nations.

Growing up in the 'ghetto' of Newark, Philip Roth recounts his childhood caught in the stranglehold of this counterfactual nightmare. As America sinks into its own dark metamorphosis and Jewish families are torn apart, fear and uncertainty spread.

Who really is President Lindbergh?

And to what end has he hijacked America?
__________________________

'Many passages in The Plot Against America echo feelings voiced today by vulnerable Americans - immigrants and minorities as alarmed by Trump's election as the Jews of Newark are frightened by Lindbergh's' New Yorker
**ONE OF THE GUARDIAN'S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21st CENTURY**
  • Published: 1 November 2015
  • ISBN: 9780099478560
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 400
  • RRP: $30.00
Categories:

About the author

Philip Roth

Philip Roth was born in Newark, New Jersey on 19 March 1933. The second child of second-generation Americans, Bess and Herman Roth, Roth grew up in the largely Jewish community of Weequahic, a neighbourhood he was to return to time and again in his writing. After graduating from Weequahic High School in 1950, he attended Bucknell University, Pennsylvania and the University of Chicago, where he received a scholarship to complete his M.A. in English Literature.

In 1959, Roth published Goodbye, Columbus – a collection of stories, and a novella – for which he received the National Book Award. Ten years later, the publication of his fourth novel, Portnoy’s Complaint, brought Roth both critical and commercial success, firmly securing his reputation as one of America’s finest young writers. Roth was the author of thirty-one books, including those that were to follow the fortunes of Nathan Zuckerman, and a fictional narrator named Philip Roth, through which he explored and gave voice to the complexities of the American experience in the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries.

Roth’s lasting contribution to literature was widely recognised throughout his lifetime, both in the US and abroad. Among other commendations he was the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, the International Man Booker Prize, twice the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Book Award, and presented with the National Medal of Arts and the National Humanities Medal by Presidents Clinton and Obama, respectively.

Philip Roth died on 22 May 2018 at the age of eighty-five having retired from writing six years previously.

portrait photo of Philip Roth

Also by Philip Roth

Nemesis
Exit Ghost
I Married a Communist
The Dying Animal
Philip Roth: Why Write? (LOA #300)
The Humbling
Indignation
See all

Praise for The Plot Against America

It’s one of the great political novels for its depiction of how alterations in power affect ordinary men and women, and how obedience brings disaster.

Linda Grant, New Statesman

In his 2004 novel, The Plot Against America, Roth precisely described the sinister and chilling nightmare in which the United States now finds itself… America has not read enough of Philip Roth

Bernard-Henri Lévy, New Statesman

A dark, humane masterpiece, Roth is at the peak of his powers

The Times

Another frighteningly intense performance

Sunday Telegraph

The word genius doesn't seem excessive... The Plot Against America creates its reality magisterially, in long, fluid sentences that carry you beyond scepticism

Guardian

Untouchable...he is bequeathing us a body of work that adds up to the most accomplished dissection of American political, social and personal mores

Observer

Magnificent. Roth is writing the best books of his life. He captures better than anyone the collision of public and private, the intrusion of history into the skin, the pores of every individual alive

Guardian

Subtle, persuasive and unsettling. A brilliantly troubling and heartening novel

Sunday Times

Many passages in The Plot Against America echo feelings voiced today by vulnerable Americans – immigrants and minorities as alarmed by Trump’s election as the Jews of Newark are frightened by Lindbergh’s

New Yorker

Dazzling. The most exciting novelist writing today

Independent on Sunday

The novel is full of his usual furious cackling; tragedy tipping into comedy and comedy into tragedy within the space of a few sentences. The prose is beautiful

Mail on Sunday

A sensation

Sunday Times

A polemical classic

Esquire

Brilliant

Metro

One of the best writers of dialogue in the history of inverted commas

The Times

A reverberating celebration of family, community and humanity

Sunday Times