Episode 2
Teenage Miriam plays on her parents' Communist credentials to impress her friends, and risks her mother's despair-fuelled rage when she sneaks a boy home.
By Jonathan Lethem
A Twentieth Century American epic by prize-winning novelist Jonathan Lethem, applying his sharp, funny and perfectly crafted prose to an alternative history of America which puts a woman at its heart - a Jewish, Communist woman, a single mother, a second generation immigrant deeply involved in the civil rights movement.
In 1955 Rose Zimmer is kicked out of the American Communist party for her affair with a black policeman. Her ire and her radicalism, her incendiary disappointment in the Twentieth Century, prove inescapable for the generations that come after her - her idealistic hippy daughter Miriam, black stepson Cicero and her lost grandson Sergius.
Episode 2: Teenage Miriam plays on her parents' Communist credentials to impress her friends, and risks her mother's despair-fuelled rage when she sneaks a boy home.
Read by Laurel Lefkow
Abridged by Elizabeth Reeder
Produced by Allegra McIlroy.
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Credits
| Role | Contributor |
|---|---|
| Reader | Laurel Lefkow |
| Producer | Allegra McIlroy |
| Abridger | Elizabeth Reeder |
| Author | Jonathan Lethem |
Broadcast
- Tue 21 Jan 201422:45BBC Radio 4
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