The Human Stain
(Part of the Complete Nathan Zuckerman (#8) Series, The American Trilogy (#3) Series, and The American Trilogy (#3) Series)
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Book Overview
One of the New York Times's 100 Best Books of the 21st Century It is 1998, the year in which America is whipped into a frenzy of prurience by the impeachment of a president, and in a small New England town, an aging classics professor, Coleman Silk, is forced to retire when his colleagues decree that he is a racist. The charge is a lie, but the real truth about Silk would have astonished even his most virulent accuser. Coleman Silk has a secret, one which has been kept for fifty years from his wife, his four children, his colleagues, and his friends, including the writer Nathan Zuckerman. It is Zuckerman who stumbles upon Silk's secret and sets out to reconstruct the unknown biography of this eminent, upright man, esteemed as an educator for nearly all his life, and to understand how this ingeniously contrived life came unraveled. And to understand also how Silk's astonishing private history is, in the words of The Wall Street Journal, "magnificently" interwoven with "the larger public history of modern America."
Customer Reviews
Rated 5 starsPowerful. Roth's characters and words will forever be with you.
Humans are complex. Judging others may be natural but the notion of knowing who is someone can never fully be achieved. One never can know the full story. This novel is a masterpiece not only because of Roth's exquisite use of language to describe his characters and to guide the reader through the complexities of just being human and making desicions, but also because it will change the way one thinks about each person...
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Rated 2 starsRead it for class.
Definitely a though read as I mostly read YA and manga. It touches mature topics and is worth it if you want a mature novel.
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Rated 5 starsBy leaps and bounds ...
Even after American Pastoral and I Married A Communist, this book still astounded me. I wasn't particularly impressed by Roth when I read him in the 1970s. Nor in the 1980s or early 1990s. He wasn't a bad writer, but he certainly wasn't great. Now he is. Human Stain and the two other titles I mentioned represent amazing growth, a writer capable of capturing the pain of loss and all the hurt humans are capable of doing to one...
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Rated 5 starsone of the best novels i have ever read
This book sat on my bookshelf for over a year before I decided to pick it up and read it. I had only read Roth?s Portnoy?s Complaint and wasn?t too impressed with it. But, when I found out that there was a movie adaptation of the book I wanted to make sure that I read the book before seeing the movie (books are typically far superior to the film adaptation). It didn?t take long before I was floored. The Human Stain is an...
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Rated 5 starsThe Unknowable and Elusive Truth
The Human Stain completes Philip Roth's thematic American trilogy, a meditation on the historical forces in the latter half of the twentieth century that have destroyed many innocent lives. In this trilogy, Roth takes devastating aim at the "American dream" and its empty promises of prosperity, freedom and everlasting happiness.The trilogy began with American Pastoral, which some believe to be the high point in Roth's career...
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The Human Stain Mentions in Our Blog
It's interesting to look back at pop culture that withstands the test of time. It's time for our annual roundup of some of the enduring titles hitting the quarter-century mark this year. Here are ten of the most memorable books published in 2000.
A few weeks ago, The New York Times Book Review published a piece entitled The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century and it has garnered lots of attention. Here's a look at the list, along with highlights, a reading guide, and more.
Today's America is hard to define. A land of promise. A melting pot. A country of immigrants. A study in contrasts. We are young. We are optimistic. We are angry. We are evolving. Here are eight contemporary authors who represent and celebrate the glorious diversity of the American experience.
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