Nemesis (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), by Philip Roth

In Philip Roth’s novella Nemesis, Bucky Cantor is a physical education teacher in a Jewish part of Newark struck by a polio epidemic in the stifling summer of 1944. Told in an often-reportorial style by a narrator who turns out to be a neighborhood kid reflecting back decades later, Nemesis is a study of an admirable but fatally flawed character. Cantor believes himself responsible for carrying the contagiona Jonah of ill fate in a universe the narrator insists is meaningless. Cantor was brought up to strive for excellence, but, lacking humor and intellectual scope, assumes an unreasonable sense of guilt as the story marches briskly toward its tragic denouement. (David Luhrssen)