--- product_id: 17574263 title: "The Human Stain: American Trilogy (3)" price: "€ 18.23" currency: EUR in_stock: true reviews_count: 8 url: https://www.desertcart.pt/products/17574263-the-human-stain-american-trilogy-3 store_origin: PT region: Portugal --- # The Human Stain: American Trilogy (3) **Price:** € 18.23 **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** The Human Stain: American Trilogy (3) - **How much does it cost?** € 18.23 with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.pt](https://www.desertcart.pt/products/17574263-the-human-stain-american-trilogy-3) ## Best For - Customers looking for quality international products ## Why This Product - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Description The Human Stain: American Trilogy (3) [Roth, Philip] on desertcart.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The Human Stain: American Trilogy (3) Review: Watch out for the purity police - This amazingly insightful novel, set in 1998, is an unrelenting look at the conflicted American psyche over prurience, purity, and political correctness and the havoc that is wreaked in the mix of those obsessions. 1998 is the year when the American public can't wait to read every anatomical detail of a President's affair with an intern while pretending to be horrified. That is the context of this story about Coleman Silk, a classics professor at Athena College located in the Berkshires, who inadvertently falls victim to these American obsessions. Coleman is an enigmatic fellow who took major social risks in his early years, only to find no escape from the political correctness agenda as he approaches seventy. The story is told by Nathan Zuckerman, aka Philip Roth, who lives near Coleman and becomes friends with him after his being drummed out of the college for a remark he made in a class that was misconstrued as being racially insensitive. It is a charge filled with irony given Coleman's background that is slowly pieced together by Zuckerman in the entirety of the book. In putting his life back together, Coleman begins an affair with a thirty-something female janitor at the college Faunia, who has been battered by life but who has a subtle appeal. Of course, this only adds fuel to the purity fire that has already burned Coleman. A French-born, young female professor and Faunia's ex-husband make every effort to ensure that Coleman pays a high price for his apparent indiscriminate pleasure seeking. The book is really more of a sociological treatise than it is a novel. The characters go on for pages in their reflections and conversations concerning the fault lines in American society and the difficulties in surmounting them. The plot is only a device to substantiate those difficulties. There is a sameness to most of the characters: their personalities are secondary to their thoughts and words. But the words are riveting. It is hard to imagine a book that better captures the destructiveness that can enter lives when it is judged that social mores have been violated regardless of a high degree of hypocrisy lurking behind the standards. Review: somber, searing "Stain" illuminates impact of moral anguish - Philip Roth's serious indictment of late twentieth-century America, "The Human Stain," is much more than a novel. On one level, Roth examines the devastating impact of a false accusation on an exemplary man's character; in this regard, "Stain" is little less than brilliant. Serious and compassionate, angry and vituperative, despondent and triumphant, the novel traces the shattered remnants of the life of an intellectual whose existence disintegrated as the result of a malicious and spurious charge. Professor Coleman Silk emerges as a fully developed protagonist, and his sufferings are genuine and wrenching. Yet, Roth spends considerable time weighing in on other compelling issues of this era: race, Vietnam, feminism, sexual expression and identity. When the author treats these issues, "The Human Stain" reads less like a novel and more like a series of extended essays on the condition of American culture at the turn of the twenty-first century. Therein lies the sole weakness of an otherwise essential, absorbing and necessary novel. I can attest from the depthless sadness of my own heart that Roth's descriptions of what happens when a good man's reputation is trashed as a result of a patently bogus accusation is not only accurate, but unflinchingly profound. When Roth asserts that "there is something fascinating about what moral suffering can do to someone who is in no obvious way a weak or feeble person," he wisely acknowledges its "insidious" nature. So profound is the sense of outrage, guilt, anger, frustration and spiritual isolation on the victim, "its raw realism is like nothing else." As I know from personal experience, once an accusation sticks, the truthfulness of the charge becomes irrelevant. Its stench and stigma invade and consume your life. We'd like to believe that our friends and colleagues have learned the horrific lessons of McCarthyism; the reality is that victimizers and perpetrators have only refined the techniques of guilt by accusation. Friends abandon you and link hands with foes in an alliance of expedience, indifference and feigned innocence and ignorance. Silk is "humiliated and humbled and destroyed...over an issue everyone knew was [expletive deleted]." Yearning for a voice of solidarity, hoping for a link with an ally, wishing for someone to take a stand with him -- Silk instead is left "to nurse the crushing sense of abandonment that festered into the wound" that would come to absorb his life. Philip Roth chooses, however, a more ambitious goal than a mere character study, and his novel suffers for that decision. Roth sacrifices narrative drive for extended soliloquies; in some instances single paragraphs consume four pages of print. Despite the enormous intellectual integrity and emotional impact of his novel, Roth's prose can leave the reader's eyes glazed with his seeminly interminable disquisitions on race, feminism, Vietnam or identity. "The Human Stain" is brutally painful, profoundly disquieting and intellectually challenging. It is also frustratingly unfocused and excessive in verbiage and length. Ignore the weaknesses of this novel. It is one of the few novels I consider to be absolutely essential to undertand what we have become as a people. Roth's chastening lessons will provide little comfort, but they must be heard and understood. ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | Best Sellers Rank | #113,442 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #729 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction #1,964 in Literary Fiction (Books) #6,294 in American Literature (Books) | | Book 3 of 3 | American Trilogy | | Customer Reviews | 4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars (2,686) | | Dimensions | 5.2 x 0.8 x 8 inches | | ISBN-10 | 0375726349 | | ISBN-13 | 978-0375726347 | | Item Weight | 2.31 pounds | | Language | English | | Print length | 361 pages | | Publication date | May 8, 2001 | | Publisher | Vintage International | ## Images ![The Human Stain: American Trilogy (3) - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71PAXCgiMNL.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Watch out for the purity police *by J***N on January 14, 2015* This amazingly insightful novel, set in 1998, is an unrelenting look at the conflicted American psyche over prurience, purity, and political correctness and the havoc that is wreaked in the mix of those obsessions. 1998 is the year when the American public can't wait to read every anatomical detail of a President's affair with an intern while pretending to be horrified. That is the context of this story about Coleman Silk, a classics professor at Athena College located in the Berkshires, who inadvertently falls victim to these American obsessions. Coleman is an enigmatic fellow who took major social risks in his early years, only to find no escape from the political correctness agenda as he approaches seventy. The story is told by Nathan Zuckerman, aka Philip Roth, who lives near Coleman and becomes friends with him after his being drummed out of the college for a remark he made in a class that was misconstrued as being racially insensitive. It is a charge filled with irony given Coleman's background that is slowly pieced together by Zuckerman in the entirety of the book. In putting his life back together, Coleman begins an affair with a thirty-something female janitor at the college Faunia, who has been battered by life but who has a subtle appeal. Of course, this only adds fuel to the purity fire that has already burned Coleman. A French-born, young female professor and Faunia's ex-husband make every effort to ensure that Coleman pays a high price for his apparent indiscriminate pleasure seeking. The book is really more of a sociological treatise than it is a novel. The characters go on for pages in their reflections and conversations concerning the fault lines in American society and the difficulties in surmounting them. The plot is only a device to substantiate those difficulties. There is a sameness to most of the characters: their personalities are secondary to their thoughts and words. But the words are riveting. It is hard to imagine a book that better captures the destructiveness that can enter lives when it is judged that social mores have been violated regardless of a high degree of hypocrisy lurking behind the standards. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ somber, searing "Stain" illuminates impact of moral anguish *by B***R on December 28, 2002* Philip Roth's serious indictment of late twentieth-century America, "The Human Stain," is much more than a novel. On one level, Roth examines the devastating impact of a false accusation on an exemplary man's character; in this regard, "Stain" is little less than brilliant. Serious and compassionate, angry and vituperative, despondent and triumphant, the novel traces the shattered remnants of the life of an intellectual whose existence disintegrated as the result of a malicious and spurious charge. Professor Coleman Silk emerges as a fully developed protagonist, and his sufferings are genuine and wrenching. Yet, Roth spends considerable time weighing in on other compelling issues of this era: race, Vietnam, feminism, sexual expression and identity. When the author treats these issues, "The Human Stain" reads less like a novel and more like a series of extended essays on the condition of American culture at the turn of the twenty-first century. Therein lies the sole weakness of an otherwise essential, absorbing and necessary novel. I can attest from the depthless sadness of my own heart that Roth's descriptions of what happens when a good man's reputation is trashed as a result of a patently bogus accusation is not only accurate, but unflinchingly profound. When Roth asserts that "there is something fascinating about what moral suffering can do to someone who is in no obvious way a weak or feeble person," he wisely acknowledges its "insidious" nature. So profound is the sense of outrage, guilt, anger, frustration and spiritual isolation on the victim, "its raw realism is like nothing else." As I know from personal experience, once an accusation sticks, the truthfulness of the charge becomes irrelevant. Its stench and stigma invade and consume your life. We'd like to believe that our friends and colleagues have learned the horrific lessons of McCarthyism; the reality is that victimizers and perpetrators have only refined the techniques of guilt by accusation. Friends abandon you and link hands with foes in an alliance of expedience, indifference and feigned innocence and ignorance. Silk is "humiliated and humbled and destroyed...over an issue everyone knew was [expletive deleted]." Yearning for a voice of solidarity, hoping for a link with an ally, wishing for someone to take a stand with him -- Silk instead is left "to nurse the crushing sense of abandonment that festered into the wound" that would come to absorb his life. Philip Roth chooses, however, a more ambitious goal than a mere character study, and his novel suffers for that decision. Roth sacrifices narrative drive for extended soliloquies; in some instances single paragraphs consume four pages of print. Despite the enormous intellectual integrity and emotional impact of his novel, Roth's prose can leave the reader's eyes glazed with his seeminly interminable disquisitions on race, feminism, Vietnam or identity. "The Human Stain" is brutally painful, profoundly disquieting and intellectually challenging. It is also frustratingly unfocused and excessive in verbiage and length. Ignore the weaknesses of this novel. It is one of the few novels I consider to be absolutely essential to undertand what we have become as a people. Roth's chastening lessons will provide little comfort, but they must be heard and understood. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I hated the dancing scene and I hated the tragic representation ... *by D***D on July 18, 2015* I read The Human Stain for an academic look at mobbing, a form of legitimized bullying hoisted on one perceived "bully" by a mob of seriously sick and destructive bullies passing themselves off as "do-gooders." Think GaGaGalenda (Glenda) of Wicked and her minions. Much of the book is pure fiction, except the mobbing of Coleman Silk--that much was true and was taken from the life of Melvin Tumlin at Princeton. As I read the first couple of chapters, I was regretting my goal to see mobbing as rumored to be demonstrated by Philip Roth. I hated the dancing scene and I hated the tragic representation of the worries of a prostate cancer survivor after surgery--the book just dragged along at first. Getting beyond those uncomfortable scenes, however, netted a delightful genius at work. I LOVE good writing, and Roth is excellent at summing up humanity in various forms at a certain time in history. In the end, I walked away feeling Roth had increased the mobbing of Tumlin with his fictional part of the story. Before knowing what was fiction and what was truth, I felt Silk got back a bit of what he dished out to his family and began thinking maybe that applied to all who are mobbed. Maybe they don't deserve a pile-on from "these" people, but maybe they deserve a push back from "someone" in their past and it has finally just come around full circle. After knowing the truth, I felt the author further destroyed a man's reputation that was already destroyed unfairly by a vicious mob. I felt mobbing was illustrated by the actual fictitious accounts of liars and by the imagination of the author who added a few more lies to the pile. Still... genius writing and epic insights! Highly recommend and am off looking for more of Roth's work now. ## Frequently Bought Together - The Human Stain: American Trilogy (3) - American Pastoral: American Trilogy 1 (Pulitzer Prize Winner) (Vintage International) - I Married a Communist --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.pt/products/17574263-the-human-stain-american-trilogy-3](https://www.desertcart.pt/products/17574263-the-human-stain-american-trilogy-3) --- *Product available on Desertcart Portugal* *Store origin: PT* *Last updated: 2026-04-24*