num_pages: 323
description: I Married a Communist is the story of the rise and fall of Ira Ringold, a big American roughneck who begins life as a teenage ditch-digger in 1930s Newark, becomes a big-time 1940s radio star, and is destroyed, as both a performer and a man, in the McCarthy witchhunt of the 1950s.In his heyday as a star—and as a zealous, bullying supporter of "progressive" political causes—Ira marries Hollywood's beloved silent-film star, Eve Frame. Their glamorous honeymoon in her Manhattan townhouse is shortlived, however, and it is the publication of Eve's scandalous bestselling exposé that identifies him as "an American taking his orders from Moscow."In this story of cruelty, betrayal, and revenge spilling over into the public arena from their origins in Ira's turbulent personal life, Philip Roth—who Commonweal calls the "master chronicler of the American twentieth century—has written a brilliant fictional portrayal of that treacherous postwar epoch when the anti-Communist fever not only infected national politics but traumatized the intimate, innermost lives of friends and families, husbands and wives, parents and children.
language: English
title: I Married a Communist
titlecomplete: I Married a Communist (The American Trilogy, #2)
characters: Nathan Zuckerman
genres: American, Americana, Politics, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Novels, Literature, The United States Of America, Fiction, Contemporary
ratings_count: 8889
places: The United States of America
series: The American Trilogy, Complete Nathan Zuckerman
awards: awardedAt: 915177600000
name: Ambassador Book Award
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 883641600000
name: Los Angeles Times Book Prize
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 946713600000
name: Dublin Literary Award
category: Shortlist
publisher: Vintage