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Notebooks 1936-1947

Serge, Victor
Publisher:  New York Review of Books
Year Published:  2019   First Published:  2012
Pages:  652pp   ISBN:  978-1-68137-270-9
Library of Congress Number:  PQ2637.E49   Dewey:  813.54--dc23
Resource Type:  Book

Victor Serge - writer, novelist, revolutionary -- left the Soviet Union in 1936 and spent the rest of his life in exile, first in France, then in Mexico. His notebooks, written in the years of fascist and Stalinist ascendency, combine grief at the state of the world with resilience, curiosity, steadfast adherence to his principles, and a love of life and culture.

Abstract: 
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Publisher's Description:

In 1936, Victor Serge -- poet, novelist, and revolutionary -- left the Soviet Union for Paris, the rare opponent of Stalin to escape the Terror. In 1940, after the Nazis marched into Paris, Serge fled France for Mexico, where he would spend the rest of his life. His years in Mexico were marked by isolation, poverty, peril, and grief; his Notebooks, however, brim with resilience, curiosity, outrage, a passionate love of life, and superb writing. Serge paints haunting portraits of Osip Mandelstam, Stefan Zweig, and 'the Old Man' Trotsky; argues with Andre Breton; and, awaiting his wife's delayed arrival from Europe, writes her passionate love letters. He describes the sweep of the Mexican landscape, visits an erupting volcano, and immerses himself in the country's history and culture. He looks back on his life and the fate of the Revolution. He broods on the course of the war and the world to come after. In the darkest of circumstances, he responds imaginatively, thinks critically, feels deeply, and finds reason to hope.

Serge's Notebooks were discovered in 2010 and appear here for the first time in their entirety in English. They are a a message in a bottle from one of the great spirits, and great writers, of our shipwrecked time.

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