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Indignation
Indignation
Jan 12, 2026 2:15 AM

Author:Philip Roth

Indignation

Now a major motion picture starring Sarah Gadon, Logan Lerman and Ben Rosenfield, and adapted for the screen by James Schamus

During the second year of the Korean War in 1951, studious, law-abiding Marcus Messner is beginning his sophomore year on the conservative campus of Ohio's Winesburg College. Marcus has fled from his hometown of Newark, New jersey, trying to escape his father's oppressive love - a love that is also a mad fear of the dangers of adult life soon to face his son. Whilst at college, Marcus has to traverse an American world that isn't his own: facing off against ardent Christian, Dean Cauldwell, and falling in love with the beautiful Olivia Hutton. Indignation gleams with narrative muscle, as it twists and turns unpredictably, and extends - shockingly - beyond the confines of natural life.

Reviews

Intricately wrought, passionate and fascinating... A late masterpiece

—— Financial Times

In Indignation, his power and intensity seem undiminished

—— New York Times

He is a writer of quite extraordinary skill and courage

—— London Review of Books

I relished Indignation. Roth writes with his trademark drive and fluency, on the knife blade between rage and laughter

—— Guardian

Roth reasserts his fictional mastery with a fine taut narrative about the frustrations of youth...every part of it is dovetailed into a story of compelling economy...a mid-20th-century tale of nemesis with all the intellectual and imaginative force of a great novelist writing at the height of his powers

—— Sunday Times

A gratifying novel... Indignation is, unquestionably, seriously "good" Roth

—— The Times

Roth's novels abound in comic moments, and so does Indignation...His powerful new novel seethes with outrage...a deft, gripping, and deeply moving narrative

—— New York Review of Books

Indignation ought to be required reading for presidential candidates

—— Evening Standard

Indignation is, among its many pleasures, a controlled expression of wrath

—— Daily Telegraph

If I had to choose one word to sum up Indignation I'd go for classy. If were allowed two: very classy

—— Sunday Telegraph

Consummately elegant

—— Sunday Times

He writes perceptively about the shift from self-absorbed teenager to adult.

—— The Times

If all works of fiction were as thoughtful, as subtle, as well constructed and as funny as Metroland there would be no more talk of the death of the novel

—— New Statesman

It's one of the best accounts of clever English schoolboyhood I've read

—— Times Educational Supplement

Irony and imagery are deployed with a finesse even Flaubert wouldn't wince at...consummately elegant

—— Sunday Times
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