Roth produces an absorbing fiction based on the scenario that President F D Roosevelt is defeated in the 1942 US election to a pro German fascist by the name of Charles A Lindbergh, a one-time US ace pilot and all round American hero. But when Lindbergh stops being a willing patsy for the Nazis, a full blown fascist coup is orchestrated in the United States and all the bigoted fascists and anti-Semites come crawling out of the woodwork. It’s a chilling novel for the general reader but doubly, trebly chilling if you happen to be of Jewish persuasion or descent – be it orthodox, liberal, secular or atheist. Anti-Semites tend not to distinguish.

It’s a fascinating read but I fear it contains a certain unintended childish naivety, and not just because the narrative unfolds through the eyes of a nine year old. Roth, one of the pre-eminent US fiction writers of the 20th century, is in danger of lapsing into a somewhat black and white, good versus evil mode. The Founding Fathers, the US Constitution, Roosevelt and his New Deal, American Democracy and apple pie; these are all good. Any deviation from the above is bad. Roth might like to invest in a copy of Oliver Stone’s ‘The Untold History of the United States’, for a fuller, more nuanced grasp of American history.

It’s not just the simplistic views of American history that irritate. Roth, like Howard Jacobson from this side of the pond, has made a fine writing career out of dissecting the urban 20th century Jewish psyche. Both men do it with convincing humour and perception. The varying neurosis particular to the Jewish diaspora are unravelled in all their splendour, while at the same time having some wonderful insights into human nature in general. The ghetto mentality – huddling together for security, pitted against the desire to integrate into the mainstream, is played out superbly by Roth in this novel. But both Roth and Jacobson for that matter, despite their many illuminating insights, are sometimes just a little too preoccupied with the Jewish stuff to be able to see the world of universal suffering beyond the pale.

On the question of universal suffering, we ought to be eternally grateful for the modern day reincarnation of Israel, because in this Zionist, colonial experiment, it becomes increasingly apparent that even the most oppressed and marginalised of people will quickly become the oppressor given half a chance. And this applies not just to Israeli Jews. There is mounting evidence that in the towns and cities in the US where the Afro-American communities have gained political power and influence, they have begun lording it over the incoming Hispanics in the way not dissimilar to how the White bigots lorded it over them. This universal tribalism would be an ideal theme for Roth to explore.

Roth, if he still has the energy and inclination, could come out of retirement and might turn his considerable literary talents to telling the story of the dispossessed Palestinians. No shortage of material there. Entire families forced, by Jewish intransigence, arrogance and outright racial bigotry, to spend generation after generation rotting in refugee camps – a nowhere land, with nowhere dreams. Here then is another dimension of the ‘Jewish experience’ that Roth and Jacobson might like to turn their hand to. It is clear from some of Roth’s other writings that he is not some unthinking Zionist bigot – far from it. His sympathies towards the dispossessed and ethnically cleansed Palestinians are obvious. So why not a final novel exploring the tensions between Jews and Palestinians, only from a Palestinian perspective. Such a project would enhance his considerable reputation still further.

Returning to ‘The Plot Against America’, Roth has performed a great public service in reminding his readers that the United States, like most nations, has a soft fascist underbelly full of bile, and that it only requires the right circumstances for that bile to come oozing up to the surface. The forthcoming European elections will likely reinforce this grim truth. But anti-Semitism need not be at the core of this festering fascist ideology. Islamaphobia, anti-Roma, or a dose of good old homophobia will equally do. Of course fascism invariably comes dripping with a toxic combination of all the above, but fear and loathing of ‘the other’ is the common ingredient and of course, an economic collapse of capital is the required materialist condition.

Will Roth’s fiction ever become reality? Well, like the old adage would have it, beware a trapped animal. As corporate America loses its pre-eminent position in the capitalist global market, squeezed as it is by a resurgent Asian capitalism, there is every likelihood that the paper thin ‘democratic’ capitalism currently deployed and enjoyed in the United States will give way to a more authoritarian, fascistic regime. NASA surveillance and a swath of so-called anti-terror legislation are hints of things to come. Such authoritarianism may take an anti-Semitic form, it may not. But a fascist America is well within the bounds of possibility and Roth should be congratulated for reminding us of this bleak reality. Remember, it was barely fifty years ago that White America was lynching Black Americans with impunity. Could it happen again? Of course it could.