The Human Stain »

Award-winning author Philip Roth has made a career of confronting the heartbreaking dissolution of relationships, the absurdity of sexual neuroses, and the downside of his own literary fame. Many of his readers believe that Roth has been merely writing his own story for nearly fifty years. However, the author refuses to offer such speculators any simple answers, saying of his characters, It's all me. Nothing is me."

Set during the sanctimonious culture wars of the 1990s, The Human Stain concludes Philip Roth's eloquent trilogy (American Pastoral, I Married a Communist) of postwar America with the story of an eminent, respected college professor whose life, career, and very identity unravel in the wake of a politically correct academic bushwhacking.

Barnes & Noble Guide to New Fiction

The master chronicler of American life in the 20th century concludes his trilogy of postwar lives, each as tragically determined by the nation's fate as by the "human stain" that so indelibly marks human nature. "Accessible, tightly woven, and downright fun. I'll be sure to pick up his backlist titles." Roth's long-winded passages were the only drawback - one reviewer counted 142 words in a single sentence!