September 5, 2004 in Features

Roth rearranging history in ‘Plot Against America’

Michael Ollove The Baltimore Sun
 

Philip Roth appears ready to cause even more mischief than usual by rearranging recent history in his forthcoming novel, “The Plot Against America.”

Roth imagines aviation hero and isolationist zealot Charles Lindbergh winning the White House in a landslide victory over Franklin Roosevelt in 1940. Blaming Jews for pushing America toward war and unmoved by the brutalization of European Jewry under the advancing Third Reich, Lindbergh signs a pact of friendship with Adolph Hitler.

The novel promises to be a realization of every American Jew’s secret nightmare: anti-Semitism as national policy.

Who better to create such a chilling vision than our greatest Jewish neurotic novelist?

“The Plot Against America” (Houghton Mifflin, 400 pages, $26) is scheduled for release Oct. 5.

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