I MARRIED A COMMUNIST PB B FORMAT – PHILIP ROTH

The second novel of Roth’s eloquent American trilogy, set in the tempestuous McCarthy era – a brilliant successor to American Pastoral I Married a Communist charts the rise and fall of Ira Ringold, an American roughneck who begins life as a ditchdigger in 1930s New Jersey, becoming a big-time radio hotshot in the 1940s. In his heyday as a star – and as a zealous, bullying supporter of progressive political causes – Ira marries Hollywood s beloved leading lady, Eve Frame. Their glamorous honeymoon is short-lived, however, and it is the publication of Eve s scandalous bestselling expose that identifies Ira as an American taking his orders from Moscow . In this story of cruelty, betrayal, and savage revenge, anti-Communist fever pollutes national politics and infects the relationships of ordinary Americans; friends become deadly enemies, parents and children tragically estranged, lovers blacklisted and felled from vertiginous heights. ‘Quintessential Philip Roth’ Sunday Telegraph