The Plot Against America (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Philip Roth
- First Published: 2004
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: 1940-1942
- Setting: Newark, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C.
- Principal Characters: Philip Roth, Sandy Roth, Herman Roth, Bess Roth, Alvin Roth, Walter Winchell, Seldon Wishnow, Aunt Evelyn, Lionel Bengelsdorf
- Genres: Long fiction
- Subjects: United States or Americans
- Locales: Washington, D.C.
In a sense, every novel is alternative history, an attempt to imagine how things might have been. A specific genre of popular fiction proceeds from the premise that a familiar public event occurred differently—for example, the South won the Civil War, Napoleon never met his Waterloo, the Spanish Armada conquered England—and extrapolates from there to depict the likely consequences of one dramatic change. In more than twenty books of fiction published since his first collection of short stories, Goodbye, Columbus, in 1959, Philip Roth has been more interested in examining the...
[The entire page is 1789 words long]
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