Nemesis
About this audiobook
Set in a Newark neighborhood during a terrifying polio outbreak, Nemesis is a wrenching examination of the forces of circumstance on our lives.
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 the 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 startlingly 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.
About the author
Philip Roth (1933–2018) was one of the most decorated writers in American history, having won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction, the National Book Critics Circle Award twice, the PEN/Faulkner Award three times, the National Book Award, and many more. He also won the Ambassador Book Award of the English-Speaking Union and in the same year received the National Medal of Arts at the White House. In 2001 he received the highest award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Gold Medal in Fiction, given every six years “for the entire work of the recipient.”
Dennis Boutsikaris, winner of AudioFile Magazine’s 2010 Best Voice in Mystery & Suspense, has recorded more than 100 audiobooks for publishers in the United States and Great Britain. His critically-acclaimed work has garnered four Golden Earphone awards and two Best Voices of the Year Awards from AudioFile Magazine and five Audies from the Audio Publishers of America. His performances include reading novels by Richard North Patterson, Tom Clancy, John Grisham, and Joseph Finder. Boutsikaris has appeared in numerous Broadway, television, and film roles. He played Mozart on Broadway in Amadeus, and has appeared on television shows including Shameless, The Good Wife, House M.D., Grey’s Anatomy, ER and Law & Order. He has won two Obie Awards—one for Outstanding Performance in Nest of the Wood Grouse and one for Outstanding Performance in Sight Unseen. His films include The Bourne Legacy, W., The Education of Charlie Banks, *batteries not included, Dream Team, Boys on the Side, and Crocodile Dundee 2.
