I Married a Communist is a Philip Roth novel concerning the rise and fall of Ira Ringold, known as "Iron Rinn".

Personal conflicts with McCarthyite politicians, a gossip columnist, and his daughter-addled and manipulative wife all combine to destroy Ira and many of those around him.

The novel tells the story of a great betrayal: Ira Ringold, laborer, upstanding communist and then media star, is socially annihilated by his wife Eve in the book, 'I Married A Communist'; in the paranoia of the 1950s 'McCarthy' era, almost nobody dares to show solidarity or support.

The rise and fall of the angry Ira Ringold (Latin: ira means anger) is told by his older brother, the teacher Murray Ringold, to his former student Nathan Zuckerman, who in turn tells the story to the readership as Philip Roth's alter ego.

[2][3][4] Some reviewers, especially those in the British press such as Rachelle Thackray of The Independent[5] and Linda Grant of The Guardian,[6] consider the character of Eve Frame — the antisemitic wife who destroys Ira — to be a barely disguised riposte to Roth's ex-wife, Claire Bloom, for her unflattering memoirs, which portrayed Roth as unable to bottle his vanity and incapable of living in the same household with Bloom's daughter, Anna Steiger.