(Fiction, 304 pp. 2010)
Bucky Cantor is a vigorous young playground director when a polio outbreak mysteriously begins to ravage 1944 Newark. Faced with an opportunity to leave the city for work in a Catskills summer camp, Bucky is torn between personal safety and professional duty in this modern American morality tale.
- One Book/One Paltz reading guide with questions
- Review: Kirkus
- Review by Edward Docx, Observer, October 2, 2010
- Review by Leah Hagar Cohen, New York Times, October 8, 2010
- Review by Nicholas Lezard, Guardian, Sept. 27, 2011
- Additional reviews
- Philip Roth’s Epidemic and Ours by Samuel Freedman, Washington Post, June 26, 2020
- The Eerie Familiarities of Philip Roth’s Novel of a Polio Epidemic by Richard Brody, The New Yorker, April 3, 2020
- Essay by Igor Webb, “Four Questions About ‘Nemesis’ Answered” Forward May 25, 2011
- Philip Roth’s Nemesis: The Case Against God and Man, by Robert Loss, PopMatters, October 11, 2010
- Video: Philip Roth reading from Nemesis (10 min.)
- Video: Nemesis and the Covid-19 Pandemic from the Newark Public Library (57 min.)
- Video: Lucia Guimaraes interviews Philip Roth (3 min.)