“Roth’s book has the elegance of a fable and the tragic inevitability of a Greek drama.” —The New Yorker

“Painful and powerful…. Somberly but vividly, [Roth] recreates the panic and fear triggered by polio.” —USA Today

Bucky Cantor is a vigorous, dutiful twenty-three-year-old playground director during the summer of 1944. A javelin thrower and weightlifter, he is disappointed with himself because his weak eyes have excluded him from serving in the war alongside his contemporaries. As a devastating disease begins to ravage Bucky's playground, Roth leads us through every inch of emotion such a pestilence can breed: fear, panic, anger, bewilderment, suffering, and pain. Moving between the streets of Newark and a pristine summer camp high in the Poconos, Nemesis tenderly and startling depicts Cantor's passage into personal disaster, the condition of childhood, and the painful effect that the wartime polio epidemic has on a closely knit, family-oriented Newark community and its children.