I Married a Communist

This book is not purchasable in your country. Please select another book.

Listen to a sample

What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Philip Roth turns his gaze on 30s and 40s America in this magnificent successor to American Pastoral.


Ira Ringold is an American roughneck who transforms himself from a ditch-digger in 1930s New Jersey, to a radio hotshot in the 1940s. In his heyday as a star - and as a bullying supporter of 'progressive' political causes - Ira marries Hollywood's leading lady, Eve Frame. Their glamorous honeymoon is short-lived, however, and it is the publication of Eve's scandalous bestselling exposé that identifies Ira as 'an American taking his orders from Moscow'. In this story of cruelty, betrayal, and revenge friends become deadly enemies, parents and children estranged, lovers blacklisted and the great felled from vertiginous heights.

'Knotted with energy, barely wasting a scene or word in its cracking velocity' Mail on Sunday

'A passionate and coruscating American tragedy' Financial Times

© 1998 Philip Roth (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Critics Review

  • A passionate and coruscating American tragedy

    Financial Times
  • Knotted with energy, barely wasting a scene or word in its cracking velocity

    Mail on Sunday
  • One of the great political novels of our age; a card-carrying Shakespearean tragedy with New Jersey dirt beneath its fingernails

    Guardian
  • Quintessential Philip Roth

    Sunday Telegraph
  • A magnificent novel of ideas, a disquisition on the fallout of the death of ideology

    Observer

Subscribe to our newsletter

Sign up to get tailored content recommendations, product updates and info on new releases. Your data is your own: we commit to protect your data and respect your privacy.