grande escritor!

Nemesis,” by Philip Roth (2012)

Roth’s slim novel looks back on a polio epidemic that falls hard on the storied Jewish community of  Newark, New Jersey, in 1944. Although largely set on the streets and playgrounds of Roth’s old Weequahic neighborhood, the novel’s action shifts to a summer camp, Indian Hill, in eastern Pennsylvania. Protagonist Bucky Cantor has joined his girlfriend Marcia to escape the disease, but even when alone with Marcia or leading kids in athletic contests, he can’t shake off the guilt he feels about surviving an epidemic that has struck down others.

Key quote: “As for God, it was easy to think kindly of Him in a paradise like Indian Hill. It was something else in Newark—or 
Europe or the Pacific—in the summer of 1944.”