Perhaps the Nobel committee would have gotten a callback had Roth been picked over Zimmerman this year? Nonetheless, it is in the high end of the Roth oeuvre which I have discovered over the last few months to be endlessly full of surprises and variety - perhaps more so than most of the other writers I have read. I did not give it five stars because as much as I liked it, it was not the narrative, gorgeous masterpiece that American Pastoral or The Human Stain were. I will not give any spoilers because - even if it is too late before Election Day 2016 to read this - it is an excellent book and I would not want someone to read this review and pass it over. The scenario is Interesting, but what Roth does best is describe the terror and uncertainty of the days during this fictive version of 1940-1942 where the US President proudly wears a medal from Hitler (and in real life, Lindbergh did have one from Göring as Roth points out in the fascinating and exhaustive 'real history' postscript) and introduces seemingly innocuous programs that are aimed at destroying the Jewish community. In it, Roth features himself as the 6-8 year old narrator seeing the events from a Jewish kid's eyes in Newark. Breathtaking and highly realistic, The Plot Against America is Philip Roth's vision of an alternative path history could have taken had Charles Lindbergh have not kept his anti-Semitism as a private matter, but (like Mr Trump) brought it into the political arena.

The plot against america book