The Human Stain by Philip Roth (2000). Mentioning two students who never come to class, seventy-one-year-old professor Coleman Silk asks, “Do they exist or are they spooks?” The students are black, and Silk is soon engulfed in a racially charged campus controversy that may expose his secret life. The imbroglio also sparks Silk’s libido, and he begins an affair with one of Roth’s most finely drawn female characters, an illiterate janitor. An attack on political correctness, the novel also explores Roth’s signature theme: the quest for personal identity free from society’s labels and expectations.
Total Points: 1 (APat 1)