Human Stain

Philip Roth


It's 1998 in a small New England town and Coleman Silk, an aging classics professor, is forced to retire when his colleagues decree that he is a racist. Silk also harbors a secret -- one he's kept for 50 years from his wife, his four children, his colleagues, and his friends, including the writer Nathan Zuckerman, who sets out to understand how this eminent, upright man, esteemed as an educator for nearly all his life, had fabricated his identity and how that cannily controlled life came unraveled.


This summary is courtesy of McNaughton Books