Nemesis, English edition

Im heißen Sommer des Kriegsjahres 1944 wütet in New Jersey eine schreckliche Polio-Epidemie: die Kinderlähmung hinterlässt lebenslange Schädigungen, viele sterben. Bucky Cantor betreut einen Kinderspielplatz und liebt seine Schützlinge - und er ist enttäuscht von sich selbst, da er wegen eines Augenleidens nicht an die Front ziehen konnte. In seinem privaten Krieg gegen die Seuche ist Cantor Angst, Panik, Wut, Fassungslosigkeit, Leid und Schmerz ausgesetzt. 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.