Indignation - Softcover

"Philip Roth's best novel since The Counterlife. In that long meantime the author has published many fine works... but none as intricately wrought, passionate and fascinating as this one... a late masterpiece" (Financial Times)

"Roth] reasserts his fictional mastery with a fine taut narrative about the frustrations of youth ... As grippingly streamlined as Greek drama, Roth's mid-20th-century tale of nemesis transmits it again, brilliantly renewed with all the intellectual and imaginative force of a great novelist writing at the height of his powers" (Sunday Times)

"Drivingly readable" (New Statesman)

"Indignation is, unquestionably, seriously "good" Roth" (The Times)

"Indignation ought to be required reading for presidential candidates" (Evening Standard)

It is 1951 in America, the second year of the Korean War. A studious, law-abiding, intense youngster from Newark, New Jersey, Marcus Messner is beginning his sophomore year on the pastoral, conservative campus of Ohio's Winesburg College. And why is he here and not at a local college in Newark where he originally enrolled? Because his father, the sturdy, hardworking neighbourhood butcher seems to have gone mad - mad with fear and apprehension of the dangers of adult life, the dangers of the world, the dangers he sees in the every corner for his beloved boy. So Marcus leaves and, far from home, has to find his way amid the customs and constrictions of another American world.

Indignation is the story of a young man's education in life's terrifying chances and bizarre obstructions. It is a story of inexperience, foolishness, intellectual resistance, sexual discovery, courage and error, told with all the inventive energy and with Roth has at his command.