The Human Stain (2000) is a novel by Philip Roth. It is set in late 1990s rural New England. Its first person narrator is 65-year-old author Nathan Zuckerman, a character in previous Roth novels, including American Pastoral (1997) and I Married a Communist (1998); these two books form a loose trilogy with The Human Stain. Zuckerman acts largely as an observer rather than the protagonist of the novel. Salon.com critic Charles Taylor argues that Ro...
more
The Human Stain (2000) is a novel by Philip Roth. It is set in late 1990s rural New England. Its first person narrator is 65-year-old author Nathan Zuckerman, a character in previous Roth novels, including American Pastoral (1997) and I Married a Communist (1998); these two books form a loose trilogy with The Human Stain. Zuckerman acts largely as an observer rather than the protagonist of the novel. Salon.com critic Charles Taylor argues that Roth had to have been at least partly inspired by the case of Anatole Broyard, a literary critic who, like the protagonist of The Human Stain, was a man variously identified as Creole or black who spent his entire professional life more-or-less passing as white.. Roth however states there is no connection as he only learned about Broyard being black from a New Yorker article published months after he started writing the novel.
The Human Stain was a national bestseller and was made into a film in 2003 starring Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman....
less
