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. A fragmented and compelling story of modern America from the perspective of those who lost out.

Episode 8: Alone in a Quaker boarding school, Sergius tries to come to terms with the loss of his family

Read by Laurel Lefkow
Abridged by Elizabeth Reeder

Produced by Allegra McIlroy. Show less