Items20The creator’s order
  1. 1A Place of Greater Safety (1992)A Place of Greater Safety (1992) 4.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 1992The French Revolution becomes a web of households, friendships, debts and institutions through Danton, Robespierre and Desmoulins. Mantel stays with what happens when people who can argue for justice must exercise power over one another. A long, crowded historical novel for the movement from…0
  2. 2El reino de este mundo (1957)El reino de este mundo (1957) 8.7/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 1957The Kingdom of This World follows Ti Noël through slavery, Haiti's revolution and the coercion of Henri Christophe's new kingdom. Work demanded for magnificent buildings makes the difference between liberation and freedom painfully concrete. Carpentier's brief, marvellous narrative is a sharp…0
  3. 3La muerte de Artemio Cruz (1962)La muerte de Artemio Cruz (1962) 8.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 1962The Death of Artemio Cruz turns a dying man's memories into an inquiry into how a revolutionary becomes a wealthy power broker. Land, marriage, business and political connections carry the Mexican Revolution's promises into a very unequal peace. Read it for the accumulation of small choices that…0
  4. 4The Sympathizer (2015)The Sympathizer (2015) 8.2/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 2015A communist agent leaves Saigon with the defeated South Vietnamese community in 1975 and continues his double life in Los Angeles. Loyalty survives the change of country, but its demands become increasingly difficult to reconcile with friendship and conscience. Nguyen's dark satire follows a…0
  5. 5Do not say we have nothing (2016)Do not say we have nothing (2016) 7.3/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 2016Musicians' lives carry China's revolutionary transformations from earlier family histories through the Cultural Revolution and towards 1989. Practice, friendship and the private circulation of writing become ways to keep something beyond an official account. Thien makes changing commitments matter…0
  6. 6To live (2003)To live (2003) 10.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 2003Fugui's changing fortunes lead him from a landowning household through civil war and decades of life under Communist rule. The test of successive campaigns becomes their effect on food, work, illness and family care. A direct, compact counterpoint to the larger political panoramas here, devastating…0
  7. 7Doctor Zhivago (1958)Doctor Zhivago (1958)Published 1 Jan 1958Yuri Zhivago's medical work, love and writing are repeatedly reorganised by revolution and civil war. The changing regime becomes a lived problem of travel, shelter, requisition and the right to keep a private life. Read it for the experience of being claimed by history while trying to remain a…0i
  8. 8The case of Comrade Tulayev; (Penguin modern classics) (1968)The case of Comrade Tulayev; (Penguin modern classics) (1968)Published 1 Jan 1968One killing in Stalinist Moscow becomes the occasion for an investigation that manufactures a much larger political explanation. Serge follows the officials, committed revolutionaries and vulnerable people made to fit it. The absorbing question is how loyalty to a revolution becomes available for…0
  9. 9Gods Are Athirst (1953)Gods Are Athirst (1953)Published 1 Jan 1953A young painter becomes a revolutionary magistrate in the Paris of 1793, carrying an ideal of justice into decisions over other people's lives. The pressure falls on intimate loyalties as much as public principles. Also translated as The Gods Will Have Blood, this relatively compact novel makes…0i
  10. 10The Underdogs (1915)The Underdogs (1915)Published 1 Jan 1915Demetrio Macías takes up arms during the Mexican Revolution, but movement and bravery do not produce a stable explanation of what the fighting is for. Companions, opportunists and local power alter the meanings attached to his actions. A short, jagged account of ideals losing their connection to…0