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The Iron Bridge
In a bold, brilliant collection of stories, Dora Award-winning playwright Anton Piatigorsky delivers a superbly inspired inquiry into the early lives of the 20th century’s most notorious tyrants. In The Iron Bridge, he is unafraid to push at the boundaries of the unexpected as he breathes fictionalized life into the adolescents who would grow up to become the most brutal dictators the world has ever known.
We discover a teenaged Mao Tse-Tung refusing an arranged marriage; Idi Amin cooking for the British Army; Stalin living in a seminary; and a melodramatic young Adolf Hitler dreaming of vast architectural achievements. Piatigorsky dazzlingly explores moments that are nothing more than vague incidents in the biographies of these men, expanding mere footnotes into entire realities as he ingeniously fills the gaps in the historical record. The Iron Bridge, completely imagined yet captivatingly real, captures those crucial instants in time that may well have helped to deliver some of the most infamous leaders in history.
We discover a teenaged Mao Tse-Tung refusing an arranged marriage; Idi Amin cooking for the British Army; Stalin living in a seminary; and a melodramatic young Adolf Hitler dreaming of vast architectural achievements. Piatigorsky dazzlingly explores moments that are nothing more than vague incidents in the biographies of these men, expanding mere footnotes into entire realities as he ingeniously fills the gaps in the historical record. The Iron Bridge, completely imagined yet captivatingly real, captures those crucial instants in time that may well have helped to deliver some of the most infamous leaders in history.
272 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2012
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About the author
Anton Piatigorsky
7 books10 followersAnton Piatigorsky is the author of THE IRON BRIDGE (Goose Lane Editions), AL-TOUNSI (Crowsnest Books) and several plays, including ETERNAL HYDRA (Coach House Books). He lives in Toronto.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
October 26, 2012
In these six exquisitely crafted short stories, Canadian playwright Piatigorsky brings to life a moment in the childhood - or adolescence - of six infamous dictators. These aren't necessarily pivotal moments, or the moment when they decided, I know, I'm going to be a ruthless, bloody dictator when I grow up! Nothing so trite or ridiculous. Rather, they are moments that could easily be overlooked as everyday, mundane and typical, even, yet they are fascinating character studies highlighting childhood influences and the beginnings of a train of thought that will later have such devastating affect.
In "Tea is Better Than Pepsi", we meet a teenaged Idi Amin in 1946, who was president of Uganda from 1971 to 1979. We meet him when he was working as an assistant cook for the King's African Rifles (a British colonial regiment, sending African soldiers to Burma and other places). A tall, broad-shouldered lad, he recalls living with his mother, Assa Aatta, an exiled Lugbara sorcerer, and the time when he was ten that she failed to cure a crazy woman who wore a skirt made of Pepsi bottles. Assa Aatta lost her esteemed reputation, and the army threw them out of the barracks, where they lived. Idi never forgave her for it, and saw her as a fraud ever after. On this day, though, he seizes a chance to prove himself and be recruited into the KAR - the beginning of his path to becoming Commander of the Ugandan army.
The second story, "A Plaything for the King's Superfluous Wives", introduces us to fourteen-year-old Saloth Sâr Pol Pot, leader of the Khmer Rouge and dictator of Cambodia, in 1939. His sister, Roeung, works with the king's dancers, all minor wives who live in the royal compound, and he has a crush on one of them, Chanlina. The guards at the gate recognise him, and on the pretext of meeting his sister, Sâr makes his way to Chanlina's home, which she shares with two other young women and a baby. They're older than him, and converge on him like a toy, taking advantage of his pubescent hormones and ignorance.
In "The Consummation", set in 1908, fifteen-year-old Mao Tse-Tung is fighting with his father over his arranged marriage with woman Luo. A bookish, lazy boy, Tse-Tung capitulates only when his mother speaks to him, but he balks at consummating the marriage, depressed by woman Luo's lack of life and vacant look and his own fear of turning into his callous and violent father. He continues to struggle with notions of duty and familial respect as laid out by Confucius, and his fantasies of joining the bandits and having the kind of adventures his fictional heroes have. Finally, he has no chance of having a real marriage with woman Luo, when his father does what he failed to do.
The fourth story, "Lado's Disciple", introduces us to an adolescent Josef Stalin in 1908, when he was a scholarship student at an orthodox seminary in Tiflis, in his native Georgia. Many of the students there held secret study groups and read communist texts under the noses of the strict priests, including Soso. The story is a detailed glimpse into his life at the seminary, his thoughts about rebels he saw as heroes, and his bullying determination to be a leader of the other students.
In "Bottle Cap", we meet seventeen-year-old Rafael Trujilio in 1908, who later became president of his native country, the Dominican Republic. He is a dandy, whitening his skin with makeup, using perfume, and saving up money from his job at the morse code office to buy a new tie. He also has obsessive compulsive disorder, collecting bottle caps and arranging them just so, with a high degree of ritual. When his brother asks him to join him on a potentially lucrative cattle raid, Rafael finally agrees, but sets his brother up to be caught in revenge for destroying his precise piles of bottle caps.
The final story, "Incensed", trails a skinny sixteen-year-old Adolf Hitler over the course of a day in 1905. Sleeping in until the afternoon, dressing up in coattails, top hat and walking stick, he spends what little money he has on the opera theatre and the arts. He had spent time in Vienna and felt himself a sophisticate because of it, though he was rejected by the Academy of Fine Art in Vienna (twice). His widowed mother, Klara, is a timid, fearful woman, easily browbeaten by her eldest son, and he callously bullies his only friend, Gustl, into going with him to the opera. Adi has wild dreams and sees himself redesigning the plain buildings of Linz.
I'm a bit torn over this book. On the one hand, I am full of admiration, for the depth of research shown, for the fine layers of detail, and for such intricate character studies. I called these stories "exquisitely crafted" with good reason. On the other hand, though, I often struggled to truly connect with the stories, and the characters in particular - all the emotions were there, degrees of empathy, if not sympathy (just how sympathetic are some of these youthful characters, especially Tse-Tung, Soso, Rafael and Adi? I can't really sympathise with bullies and arrogant, selfish fools, and I'm sure I'm not meant to); but there was always a degree of distance.
This would be mostly due to the writing style. Cool, collected, present tense (I'm not a fan), very well-written but sometimes too descriptive, slowing the stories down and enabling my mind to wander. It was that weird mix of being fascinated, and yet slightly bored, all because of the slow pacing. The tone, the cadence, was just so steady and controlled, like a musical score that has a beat but no harmony. The measured pacing never changed, whether it was a paragraph of reflection, description or action, and that made the prose seem a bit rigid, even when it was poetical and insightful. It's a matter of what clicks with you on a personal level, and we don't have much say in that.
That's not to say that I wasn't impressed, because I was. I especially liked "Bottle Cap", which was one of those perfectly constructed short stories that delves into a character without telling you what to think all the time, and built up a backstory, context, and action, as well as framing a believable backdrop for someone who later had the blood of hundreds of thousands of people on his hands. I was also impressed with the story of Adi (Hitler), "Incensed", though of all the stories, this one was the one where you could really see a scary man in the making. The others, well those characters could have gone in numerous directions. Adi was a bit scary. In fact, I was reading the National Post's review which came out earlier today (26th October 2012) in which the reviewer likened the stories to gothic horror and monster stories, and the comparison immediately clicked with me. I hadn't thought of them in that way until then (it's not an obvious comparison), but there is definitely something horrifically gothic in these stories of monsters in the making.
It definitely helps, I think, to have some prior knowledge of these historical characters. I had never heard of Idi Amin or Rafael Trujili before, for example, and I don't know much about the personal lives of any of them save a bit of Stalin and Hitler (his frustrated artistic ambitions are well-known, though I had forgotten that he was Austrian. Speaking of which, I didn't know Stalin was from Georgia, though that was part of the Russian Empire at the time). When I knew more about the historical figures, I found I could identify the extra layers and dimensions to the story. The story about Saloth Sâr (Pol Pot), for instance, had minimal impact on me because I know very little about Pol Pot or what exactly he did in Cambodia. The name figures like a monster, and the Khmer Rouge comes with images of blood and violence and maimed children, but that's not the same thing as knowing any details. So the story was interesting but didn't have the same effect on me as the ones on Stalin and Hitler. Especially Hitler - you can really see the man he became later, in this teenager, though his energies - and anger - are redirected to the arts:
Where I felt I had some knowledge of the men they were to become, I could detect the subtlety and the layers of meaning, and where I had very little or none, I could simply appreciate the stories for being solid character studies. Some of the characters - or it could just be the nature of the angle of the story Piatigorsky chose - are more vivid than others. One of the reasons why I enjoyed "Bottle Cap" more than some of the others was due to the construction of Rafael as a character, one with OCD and a deep fear of bad omens, who is highly superstitious and indulges in petty revenge. A mulatto by heritage, he tries to disguise his brownish skin, tries to remake himself, and make others see him in the way he wants them to (I read that, as president, he had hundreds of statues of himself erected around the country).
Themes of sexual temptation occur frequently, as does a strong need to prove oneself and fulfil a self-image that is often unrealistic. In general, all the stories made me want to learn more about these historical figures, especially the ones I don't know much about. Getting this tantalising glimpse into their lives - fictionalised, yes, but still framed in facts where possible - seriously whet my appetite for history, a subject I love and yet sadly have little time (or energy) for these days. Piatigorsky isn't afraid to speculate, or use artistic license to connect the dots, which I really appreciate - some authors who write about historical figures seem to feel constrained by a fear of conjecturing wildly, as if the long-dead individual would accuse them of defamation.
If Piatigorsky's prose read, to me, as a bit constrained and slow, I relished the artful, unhindered explorations of these boys who came to be seen as monsters, and the layered, nuanced exploration of their characters and psyches. With a great sense of setting and culture spanning the globe, Anton Piatigorsky's debut work of fiction is an intriguing and fascinating exploration into the minds and motivations of some of history's darkest characters.
My thanks to the publisher for a copy of this book.
In "Tea is Better Than Pepsi", we meet a teenaged Idi Amin in 1946, who was president of Uganda from 1971 to 1979. We meet him when he was working as an assistant cook for the King's African Rifles (a British colonial regiment, sending African soldiers to Burma and other places). A tall, broad-shouldered lad, he recalls living with his mother, Assa Aatta, an exiled Lugbara sorcerer, and the time when he was ten that she failed to cure a crazy woman who wore a skirt made of Pepsi bottles. Assa Aatta lost her esteemed reputation, and the army threw them out of the barracks, where they lived. Idi never forgave her for it, and saw her as a fraud ever after. On this day, though, he seizes a chance to prove himself and be recruited into the KAR - the beginning of his path to becoming Commander of the Ugandan army.
The second story, "A Plaything for the King's Superfluous Wives", introduces us to fourteen-year-old Saloth Sâr Pol Pot, leader of the Khmer Rouge and dictator of Cambodia, in 1939. His sister, Roeung, works with the king's dancers, all minor wives who live in the royal compound, and he has a crush on one of them, Chanlina. The guards at the gate recognise him, and on the pretext of meeting his sister, Sâr makes his way to Chanlina's home, which she shares with two other young women and a baby. They're older than him, and converge on him like a toy, taking advantage of his pubescent hormones and ignorance.
In "The Consummation", set in 1908, fifteen-year-old Mao Tse-Tung is fighting with his father over his arranged marriage with woman Luo. A bookish, lazy boy, Tse-Tung capitulates only when his mother speaks to him, but he balks at consummating the marriage, depressed by woman Luo's lack of life and vacant look and his own fear of turning into his callous and violent father. He continues to struggle with notions of duty and familial respect as laid out by Confucius, and his fantasies of joining the bandits and having the kind of adventures his fictional heroes have. Finally, he has no chance of having a real marriage with woman Luo, when his father does what he failed to do.
The fourth story, "Lado's Disciple", introduces us to an adolescent Josef Stalin in 1908, when he was a scholarship student at an orthodox seminary in Tiflis, in his native Georgia. Many of the students there held secret study groups and read communist texts under the noses of the strict priests, including Soso. The story is a detailed glimpse into his life at the seminary, his thoughts about rebels he saw as heroes, and his bullying determination to be a leader of the other students.
In "Bottle Cap", we meet seventeen-year-old Rafael Trujilio in 1908, who later became president of his native country, the Dominican Republic. He is a dandy, whitening his skin with makeup, using perfume, and saving up money from his job at the morse code office to buy a new tie. He also has obsessive compulsive disorder, collecting bottle caps and arranging them just so, with a high degree of ritual. When his brother asks him to join him on a potentially lucrative cattle raid, Rafael finally agrees, but sets his brother up to be caught in revenge for destroying his precise piles of bottle caps.
[Rafael] cuts off Padre Ayala and heads towards his home, forgetting the fury of brother Fernando, María's chunky body and smooth skin, and even the omen of dots and dashes. This bottle cap must be integrated into his collection right away. Appropriate adjustments must be made. A failure to do so properly will cancel out the telegraphic omen, replacing that good portent with a violent and destructive one, which couldn't be cured by crushed oranges or sprinkled seeds, or any means other than old-fashioned patience, fortitude, and endurance. The prospect of failure makes him feel sick. A bad omen could mean cancer, tuberculosis, disasters of human or divine origin. [p.185]
The final story, "Incensed", trails a skinny sixteen-year-old Adolf Hitler over the course of a day in 1905. Sleeping in until the afternoon, dressing up in coattails, top hat and walking stick, he spends what little money he has on the opera theatre and the arts. He had spent time in Vienna and felt himself a sophisticate because of it, though he was rejected by the Academy of Fine Art in Vienna (twice). His widowed mother, Klara, is a timid, fearful woman, easily browbeaten by her eldest son, and he callously bullies his only friend, Gustl, into going with him to the opera. Adi has wild dreams and sees himself redesigning the plain buildings of Linz.
I'm a bit torn over this book. On the one hand, I am full of admiration, for the depth of research shown, for the fine layers of detail, and for such intricate character studies. I called these stories "exquisitely crafted" with good reason. On the other hand, though, I often struggled to truly connect with the stories, and the characters in particular - all the emotions were there, degrees of empathy, if not sympathy (just how sympathetic are some of these youthful characters, especially Tse-Tung, Soso, Rafael and Adi? I can't really sympathise with bullies and arrogant, selfish fools, and I'm sure I'm not meant to); but there was always a degree of distance.
This would be mostly due to the writing style. Cool, collected, present tense (I'm not a fan), very well-written but sometimes too descriptive, slowing the stories down and enabling my mind to wander. It was that weird mix of being fascinated, and yet slightly bored, all because of the slow pacing. The tone, the cadence, was just so steady and controlled, like a musical score that has a beat but no harmony. The measured pacing never changed, whether it was a paragraph of reflection, description or action, and that made the prose seem a bit rigid, even when it was poetical and insightful. It's a matter of what clicks with you on a personal level, and we don't have much say in that.
That's not to say that I wasn't impressed, because I was. I especially liked "Bottle Cap", which was one of those perfectly constructed short stories that delves into a character without telling you what to think all the time, and built up a backstory, context, and action, as well as framing a believable backdrop for someone who later had the blood of hundreds of thousands of people on his hands. I was also impressed with the story of Adi (Hitler), "Incensed", though of all the stories, this one was the one where you could really see a scary man in the making. The others, well those characters could have gone in numerous directions. Adi was a bit scary. In fact, I was reading the National Post's review which came out earlier today (26th October 2012) in which the reviewer likened the stories to gothic horror and monster stories, and the comparison immediately clicked with me. I hadn't thought of them in that way until then (it's not an obvious comparison), but there is definitely something horrifically gothic in these stories of monsters in the making.
It definitely helps, I think, to have some prior knowledge of these historical characters. I had never heard of Idi Amin or Rafael Trujili before, for example, and I don't know much about the personal lives of any of them save a bit of Stalin and Hitler (his frustrated artistic ambitions are well-known, though I had forgotten that he was Austrian. Speaking of which, I didn't know Stalin was from Georgia, though that was part of the Russian Empire at the time). When I knew more about the historical figures, I found I could identify the extra layers and dimensions to the story. The story about Saloth Sâr (Pol Pot), for instance, had minimal impact on me because I know very little about Pol Pot or what exactly he did in Cambodia. The name figures like a monster, and the Khmer Rouge comes with images of blood and violence and maimed children, but that's not the same thing as knowing any details. So the story was interesting but didn't have the same effect on me as the ones on Stalin and Hitler. Especially Hitler - you can really see the man he became later, in this teenager, though his energies - and anger - are redirected to the arts:
Adi steps closer, his eyes so intense and full that Frau Kubizek retreats a couple of steps, her bum pressing against the sink. She closes her mouth.
"I need not tell you, Frau Kubizek," says the fiery but still scrupulously polite guest, "that our dear Gustl has talent, which does not appear with any frequency in men. When a person has that blessing, he also has a certain responsibility to seize and develop it. It would be criminal of you, Frau Kubizek, and criminal of Herr Kubizek, and even criminal of Gustl himself, to forsake or ignore such a gift. It would be like spitting into the face of fate, would it not? Lohengrin is about to be performed in our fair city. That is more important than upholstery. Gustl will benefit by attending the opera this evening. He will grow and mature immeasurably from the experience, and I am sure he will then learn to seize the spirit and harness his considerable power of creation. You must let him go."
Frau Kubizek is holding an unopened bean husk with two hands as if it were a life preserver. Her eyes are wide and her brow is raised. "My, my," she says, amazed. "In that case." [p.241]
Where I felt I had some knowledge of the men they were to become, I could detect the subtlety and the layers of meaning, and where I had very little or none, I could simply appreciate the stories for being solid character studies. Some of the characters - or it could just be the nature of the angle of the story Piatigorsky chose - are more vivid than others. One of the reasons why I enjoyed "Bottle Cap" more than some of the others was due to the construction of Rafael as a character, one with OCD and a deep fear of bad omens, who is highly superstitious and indulges in petty revenge. A mulatto by heritage, he tries to disguise his brownish skin, tries to remake himself, and make others see him in the way he wants them to (I read that, as president, he had hundreds of statues of himself erected around the country).
He has already powdered himself, but it hasn't been enough. He lays the comb aside, dabs his pad in the whitening powder, and applies another thick layer to his cheeks, forehead, and neck. He's gritting his teeth and patting his face hard with the makeup pad, wondering all the while why his pure-blood Spanish ancestor couldn't stop himself just that once from ramming his cock into a black girl, as if those Haitian temptresses weren't enough trouble already with their constant encroachments on Spanish land, their barbaric jungle religions, and their incomprehensible, mashed-up excuse for French. [p206]
Themes of sexual temptation occur frequently, as does a strong need to prove oneself and fulfil a self-image that is often unrealistic. In general, all the stories made me want to learn more about these historical figures, especially the ones I don't know much about. Getting this tantalising glimpse into their lives - fictionalised, yes, but still framed in facts where possible - seriously whet my appetite for history, a subject I love and yet sadly have little time (or energy) for these days. Piatigorsky isn't afraid to speculate, or use artistic license to connect the dots, which I really appreciate - some authors who write about historical figures seem to feel constrained by a fear of conjecturing wildly, as if the long-dead individual would accuse them of defamation.
If Piatigorsky's prose read, to me, as a bit constrained and slow, I relished the artful, unhindered explorations of these boys who came to be seen as monsters, and the layered, nuanced exploration of their characters and psyches. With a great sense of setting and culture spanning the globe, Anton Piatigorsky's debut work of fiction is an intriguing and fascinating exploration into the minds and motivations of some of history's darkest characters.
My thanks to the publisher for a copy of this book.
November 29, 2014
This is a collection of six short stories each focusing on a different 20th-century dictator, offering a brief glimpse of an imagined moment in his childhood or young adulthood, skilfully capturing the unique voice of each protagonist.
I have to admit that I had limited knowledge on quite a few of these infamous dictators (Idi Amin, Pol Pot and Rafael Trujilio in particular) so part of my enjoyment was to search for them on Wikipedia before reading their stories. Firstly, this helped me to put things into context, secondly to broaden my (clearly embarrassing) knowledge and lastly to understand what was factual and what was embroidered on by the author – this is a work of speculative fiction after all.
Overall these stories were dominated by typical teenage angst but the author was able to subtly inject unique viewpoints and twisted suggestion into each telling without outright showing you the pivotal moment when they turned into monsters.
Its always difficult to rate short stories so I will let the math decide:
1) Idi Amin - 4 stars
This captured the unique voice of an African boy so expertly I find it hard to believe this is not exactly how things played out.
2) Pol Pot - 2 stars
A speculative shap shot of the man who came to be the monster that started the Vietnam war which left me underwhelmed.
3) Chairman Mao - 4 stars
Forced into an arranged marriage at 14, never acknowledging its validity later in life (fact) set the stage expertly of what was to come once this madman came into power.
4) Josef Stalin - 3 stars
This story portrayed the collective angst of overzealous boys in a strict seminary environment, making covert talk of revolution too tempting to ignore. It suggests that if Josef Stalin didn’t rise to power someone else would have stepped up in his place.
5) Rafael Trujilio - 3 stars
Portrayed as a deeply disturbed boy with OCD and overly obsessed about hiding his Latino skin colour.
6) Hitler - 3 stars
I expected a bit more from this one as he is the most infamous monster of them all. I found more resonance with the movie Max as a portrayal of Hitler’s early life as a struggling (read talentless) artist than this story.
The voices of Idi Amin, Chairman Mao and Josef Stalin felt closest to the truth than the others however I suspect that this sentiment is purely personal.
Netgally Copy
p
I have to admit that I had limited knowledge on quite a few of these infamous dictators (Idi Amin, Pol Pot and Rafael Trujilio in particular) so part of my enjoyment was to search for them on Wikipedia before reading their stories. Firstly, this helped me to put things into context, secondly to broaden my (clearly embarrassing) knowledge and lastly to understand what was factual and what was embroidered on by the author – this is a work of speculative fiction after all.
Overall these stories were dominated by typical teenage angst but the author was able to subtly inject unique viewpoints and twisted suggestion into each telling without outright showing you the pivotal moment when they turned into monsters.
Its always difficult to rate short stories so I will let the math decide:
1) Idi Amin - 4 stars
This captured the unique voice of an African boy so expertly I find it hard to believe this is not exactly how things played out.
2) Pol Pot - 2 stars
A speculative shap shot of the man who came to be the monster that started the Vietnam war which left me underwhelmed.
3) Chairman Mao - 4 stars
Forced into an arranged marriage at 14, never acknowledging its validity later in life (fact) set the stage expertly of what was to come once this madman came into power.
4) Josef Stalin - 3 stars
This story portrayed the collective angst of overzealous boys in a strict seminary environment, making covert talk of revolution too tempting to ignore. It suggests that if Josef Stalin didn’t rise to power someone else would have stepped up in his place.
5) Rafael Trujilio - 3 stars
Portrayed as a deeply disturbed boy with OCD and overly obsessed about hiding his Latino skin colour.
6) Hitler - 3 stars
I expected a bit more from this one as he is the most infamous monster of them all. I found more resonance with the movie Max as a portrayal of Hitler’s early life as a struggling (read talentless) artist than this story.
The voices of Idi Amin, Chairman Mao and Josef Stalin felt closest to the truth than the others however I suspect that this sentiment is purely personal.
Netgally Copy
p
July 3, 2025
A fast and fascinating read. One would think such a subject, never mind multiplied by four, would have been fashioned into some sort of literature by now...but if it has elsewhere, this is the first time I've encountered it. I found them all to be stories of ambition and fantasy gone horribly, pathetically wrong...except for Stalin's story, which seems to show him to be a power-hungry prosaic from the outset. Perhaps each subject it worth a novel each, but in this compact format everyone gets their due...whether or not they deserve it. But that sentiment itself may be the point of the entire collection.
July 6, 2013
Anton Piatigorsky’s new short story collection, “The Iron Bridge,” takes a fascinating concept, and produces six extraordinarily crafted tales. The idea is a simple one. Piatigorsky creates a seminal adolescent moment in the lives of six young men, each of whom would become one of the world’s most-feared dictators.
When I first read the idea for this collection, I was envisioning more of a comedic approach: a teenaged Hitler playing beach volleyball and frolicking in the surf. Something far more pedestrian and simple than what the author presents here.
These stories’ protagonists are all big hitters in the dictatorial world: Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, Trujillo, Idi Amin. They take different tacks, though.
In “Tea is Better than Pepsi,” we find Idi Amin as a dishwasher slaving in a British-led African military base. Amin finds himself unhappy with his lot, until a situation arises during a soccer game. Amin finds himself ready to display the power and leadership he’d come to know was inside him.
Adolf Hitler’s story strikes true, showing “Adi” as a self-important, daydreaming young dandy, coddled by his mother, beaten by his father. His visions are grandiose, and full of changes he would one day affect upon his home town as a great and wealthy artist. He flashes back to playing war with other boys, but that was it violence-wise; his aspirations were all cultural, not military. He wears a top hat, carries an ebony walking stick, and fancies himself a great arbiter of the arts, though he shows flashes of sudden and furious rage.
Mao finds himself forced into an arranged marriage he doesn’t want. Pol Pot visits a dancer in the royal court, and ends up with an experience he never could have imagined. Trujillo is a fastidious young man, always impeccably dressed, his face heavily powdered to obscure the hated dark “flaws” in his complexion.
I especially liked Stalin’s tale. He’s a student at an Orthodox seminary school, and he gets into an ideological battle with another student over Social Darwinism, and how he’d use Socialism to change society. The way he wins predicts the skill and ruthlessness that will ultimately lead him to wield absolute control over a superpower.
While these short stories are just that—short pieces of fiction—Piatigorsky read extensively about each of his young protagonists, devouring not only biographies of the tyrants’ childhood years, but also psychological studies where available. The research helps a great deal.
More importantly, though, Anton Piatigorsky has a true storyteller’s gift. On relatively small canvases—most of these stories are 40 to 50 pages—the author paints vivid portraits of our young dictators-to-be. These are not bad kids. They’re not necessarily little angels either, but they are confused, frustrated teenaged boys. There was something inside each of them, though, that led them to a terrible crossroads.
Most of these tales actually lead to one crossroads or another. For some—Amin, for example—it was a seminal moment of self-discovery, where he learned the power he had inside. For others, the climaxes set them off down a long path toward their ultimate destinies. For still others, we see how the world and their inner-natures were clearing the way for the cruel madness they’d ultimately exhibit.
What Piatigorsky attempts here is an interesting literary exercise—what were six of history’s most brutal men like as teenagers? The result is far from perfunctory. Each of these stories is well-crafted, and takes us inside the subjects’ respective cultures. Most of all, each is a thoughtful, creative, unorthodox fiction winnowed from great and horrible lives that were far-too-real.
Highly Recommended.
(nb: I received an advance review copy from the publisher via Edelweiss)
When I first read the idea for this collection, I was envisioning more of a comedic approach: a teenaged Hitler playing beach volleyball and frolicking in the surf. Something far more pedestrian and simple than what the author presents here.
These stories’ protagonists are all big hitters in the dictatorial world: Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, Trujillo, Idi Amin. They take different tacks, though.
In “Tea is Better than Pepsi,” we find Idi Amin as a dishwasher slaving in a British-led African military base. Amin finds himself unhappy with his lot, until a situation arises during a soccer game. Amin finds himself ready to display the power and leadership he’d come to know was inside him.
Adolf Hitler’s story strikes true, showing “Adi” as a self-important, daydreaming young dandy, coddled by his mother, beaten by his father. His visions are grandiose, and full of changes he would one day affect upon his home town as a great and wealthy artist. He flashes back to playing war with other boys, but that was it violence-wise; his aspirations were all cultural, not military. He wears a top hat, carries an ebony walking stick, and fancies himself a great arbiter of the arts, though he shows flashes of sudden and furious rage.
Mao finds himself forced into an arranged marriage he doesn’t want. Pol Pot visits a dancer in the royal court, and ends up with an experience he never could have imagined. Trujillo is a fastidious young man, always impeccably dressed, his face heavily powdered to obscure the hated dark “flaws” in his complexion.
I especially liked Stalin’s tale. He’s a student at an Orthodox seminary school, and he gets into an ideological battle with another student over Social Darwinism, and how he’d use Socialism to change society. The way he wins predicts the skill and ruthlessness that will ultimately lead him to wield absolute control over a superpower.
While these short stories are just that—short pieces of fiction—Piatigorsky read extensively about each of his young protagonists, devouring not only biographies of the tyrants’ childhood years, but also psychological studies where available. The research helps a great deal.
More importantly, though, Anton Piatigorsky has a true storyteller’s gift. On relatively small canvases—most of these stories are 40 to 50 pages—the author paints vivid portraits of our young dictators-to-be. These are not bad kids. They’re not necessarily little angels either, but they are confused, frustrated teenaged boys. There was something inside each of them, though, that led them to a terrible crossroads.
Most of these tales actually lead to one crossroads or another. For some—Amin, for example—it was a seminal moment of self-discovery, where he learned the power he had inside. For others, the climaxes set them off down a long path toward their ultimate destinies. For still others, we see how the world and their inner-natures were clearing the way for the cruel madness they’d ultimately exhibit.
What Piatigorsky attempts here is an interesting literary exercise—what were six of history’s most brutal men like as teenagers? The result is far from perfunctory. Each of these stories is well-crafted, and takes us inside the subjects’ respective cultures. Most of all, each is a thoughtful, creative, unorthodox fiction winnowed from great and horrible lives that were far-too-real.
Highly Recommended.
(nb: I received an advance review copy from the publisher via Edelweiss)
Want to read
October 8, 2013While I was back in Canada, I spent a lot of time in bookstores. Not just because I wanted to, though I did, but also because the Indigo in Yorkdale is my mom and my meeting place of choice. One day I came across this book and was intrigued, but I didn't buy it. The next time I was there the display had changed and I couldn't find it again - a greyish book about dictators wasn't something the staff could help me find. But Goodreads has connected me to it again and I gave in to the one-click and got it.
July 11, 2013
one time hitler won the lottery or thought he did so he went to the opera but his little gay friend pointed out that he didn't win the lottery & that the opera wasn't about him & some chick didn't even want to suck his dick like in that opera & so hitler started hitting him in his stupid jew face
January 6, 2018
I’d been meaning to read this book for a long time, and finally managed to get my hands on it this holiday season. And what an opportune time to be reading it! Right when megalomaniacal world leaders butt heads over who has the largest nuclear button and leaders’ of democracies casually strip away peoples’ rights.
The Iron Bridge is a collection of 6 short stories by Anton Piatigorsky that offer a glimpse into the imagined teenage lives of 6 of the most (in)famous tyrants of the modern era: Idi Amin as a young dishwasher in the British Army with dreams of becoming a respected soldier; naïve Pol Pot’s sexual awakening at the hands of (pun fully intended) palace concubines; Mao Tse-Tung’s defiance of his father and his anxiety in consummating his arranged marriage; Rafael Trujillo’s obsessive compulsive behaviour spurring his belief in luck and bad omens; a young seminarian Josef Stalin’s mean-spirited rebellion to create his own reading circle and Adolf Hitler’s dandyish outings in Linz where he dreams of winning a lottery and creating his dream architectural project.
Piatigorsky draws upon stray little facts from their lives and imaginatively creates a compelling character study without sympathizing with any of them. We spot in them the early psychological underpinnings of what later spurred them to heinous crimes. But obviously, Piatigorsky is working backwards- inculcating well-documented character quirks of these dictators into these boys playing at being men and taking themselves far too seriously. Thus they’re not without western biases: such as Idi Amin being an oafish but dim-witted friendly figure with a penchant for violence.
The imagery of the bridge thematically ties all the stories, but is most prominent in the last tale about Hitler. A young Adolf standing over the Danube rants over the need for a new bridge to replace the aesthetically unappealing iron bridge. The bridge symbolizes each of the young men’s ambitious struggle to disassociate themselves from their squalid surroundings and create a grander identity for themselves. They desire to change reality, to erect a new structure that they will be in total control of (unlike the lives they’re living where they are hemmed by paternal figures or the society at large). History has been witness to the carnage that this vision of theirs has unleashed upon the world.
Bottle Cap (Trujillo’s story) and The Consummation (Mao’s story) were my favourites. Some of the stories have also made me want to pick up biographies of these dictators, because I know only the Wikipedia version of their deeds. And any work that incites me to question and read up further, is a bonafide Winner in my books.
The Iron Bridge is a collection of 6 short stories by Anton Piatigorsky that offer a glimpse into the imagined teenage lives of 6 of the most (in)famous tyrants of the modern era: Idi Amin as a young dishwasher in the British Army with dreams of becoming a respected soldier; naïve Pol Pot’s sexual awakening at the hands of (pun fully intended) palace concubines; Mao Tse-Tung’s defiance of his father and his anxiety in consummating his arranged marriage; Rafael Trujillo’s obsessive compulsive behaviour spurring his belief in luck and bad omens; a young seminarian Josef Stalin’s mean-spirited rebellion to create his own reading circle and Adolf Hitler’s dandyish outings in Linz where he dreams of winning a lottery and creating his dream architectural project.
Piatigorsky draws upon stray little facts from their lives and imaginatively creates a compelling character study without sympathizing with any of them. We spot in them the early psychological underpinnings of what later spurred them to heinous crimes. But obviously, Piatigorsky is working backwards- inculcating well-documented character quirks of these dictators into these boys playing at being men and taking themselves far too seriously. Thus they’re not without western biases: such as Idi Amin being an oafish but dim-witted friendly figure with a penchant for violence.
The imagery of the bridge thematically ties all the stories, but is most prominent in the last tale about Hitler. A young Adolf standing over the Danube rants over the need for a new bridge to replace the aesthetically unappealing iron bridge. The bridge symbolizes each of the young men’s ambitious struggle to disassociate themselves from their squalid surroundings and create a grander identity for themselves. They desire to change reality, to erect a new structure that they will be in total control of (unlike the lives they’re living where they are hemmed by paternal figures or the society at large). History has been witness to the carnage that this vision of theirs has unleashed upon the world.
Bottle Cap (Trujillo’s story) and The Consummation (Mao’s story) were my favourites. Some of the stories have also made me want to pick up biographies of these dictators, because I know only the Wikipedia version of their deeds. And any work that incites me to question and read up further, is a bonafide Winner in my books.
May 31, 2021
It’s hard for me to be unbiased because it’s my uncles book lol
March 3, 2017
Interesting project of stories imagining 20th century dictators in their teens. I found Pol Pot most memorable
September 8, 2012
My two great loves in life, and my academic interests, are Canadian literature and political history. When I saw The Iron Bridge by Anton Piatigorsky in Goose Lane’s fall catalog I knew this was a book I had to read. A collection of six short stories, Piatigorsky fictionalizes the youth of six of the world’s most notoriously brutal despotic tyrants: Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Mao Tse-Tung, Josef Stalin, Rafael Trujillo, and Adolf Hitler. Each and every one of these stories are masterful examples of historic fiction that, while reading, produces conflicted and confusing feelings.
What is most fascinating about Piatigorsky’s stories is that they humanize these evil men who were responsible for a over 100 million combined deaths. With some of these future dictators, Mao Tse-Tung in particular, the author actually crafts a very sympathetic character. This is done in part by Piatigorsky using the characters’ native language names (e.g. Ioseb Besarionis Jughashvili rather than Josef Stalin) so you form a bond with the protagonist before you are completely certain who he is.
Something that I was initially worried about with this book was that the author would try to pinpoint the moment that these men were driven mad. He didn’t. All of these stories are very episodic; they delve into potentially important moments, but not necessarily tipping-point moments. I am not 100% certain of the historical veracity of these stories, but the acknowledgements seem to indicate this book was extremely well researched.
The biggest strength in Anton Piatigorsky’s writing is his dialogue. This is not surprising since he is a highly decorated playwright. His characters’ idioms and speech patterns closely resemble what one sees in recordings of their public speeches. Stalin’s dialogue is full of reserved anger, Mao’s is full of hyperbole, and Hitler’s is full of lengthy and lofty rhetoric.
The Iron Bridge lived up to my expectations; it is complex, highly readable, the characters are three-dimensional, and the stories are all long enough to allow for real depth but not so long that they can’t be completed in one sitting. Also worth mentioning is the cover image. This is probably the most provocative and eye catching cover of any work of fiction released in the last number years. The Iron Bridge is available September 14; details about ordering and the author are available from Goose Lane Editions.
What is most fascinating about Piatigorsky’s stories is that they humanize these evil men who were responsible for a over 100 million combined deaths. With some of these future dictators, Mao Tse-Tung in particular, the author actually crafts a very sympathetic character. This is done in part by Piatigorsky using the characters’ native language names (e.g. Ioseb Besarionis Jughashvili rather than Josef Stalin) so you form a bond with the protagonist before you are completely certain who he is.
Something that I was initially worried about with this book was that the author would try to pinpoint the moment that these men were driven mad. He didn’t. All of these stories are very episodic; they delve into potentially important moments, but not necessarily tipping-point moments. I am not 100% certain of the historical veracity of these stories, but the acknowledgements seem to indicate this book was extremely well researched.
The biggest strength in Anton Piatigorsky’s writing is his dialogue. This is not surprising since he is a highly decorated playwright. His characters’ idioms and speech patterns closely resemble what one sees in recordings of their public speeches. Stalin’s dialogue is full of reserved anger, Mao’s is full of hyperbole, and Hitler’s is full of lengthy and lofty rhetoric.
The Iron Bridge lived up to my expectations; it is complex, highly readable, the characters are three-dimensional, and the stories are all long enough to allow for real depth but not so long that they can’t be completed in one sitting. Also worth mentioning is the cover image. This is probably the most provocative and eye catching cover of any work of fiction released in the last number years. The Iron Bridge is available September 14; details about ordering and the author are available from Goose Lane Editions.
Read
September 28, 2013DNF Review
I decided to put this book down because it wasn't really holding my attention.
I think that my expectations for the book were different than what was delivered. I was expecting something that perhaps provided insight into dictators and tyrants but in reality, the stories are more like vignettes from their life. Some of them were very strange and just seemed to meander onwards without a destination in mind.
I'm also conflicted over what I think could have improved the book. On one hand, I believe that there should have been some context to these historical figures (admittedly, I had to search a few of them on Wikipedia as my area of historical study has mainly been focused on Canada). Context, in the form of a page documenting who the person grew up to be and why they are known as a tyrant would have been chilling in contrast to the stories. On the other hand, I also know that it is important in studying history to understand that each person is human: Pol Pot, Chairman Mao, Stalin, Hitler, etc. each committed acts of unspeakable evil, but they are not in fact, monsters. In many ways, these stories reminded me that demonizing historical figures is never helpful, as it does not allow you to be critical and it puts us into a false sense of security, thinking that it is a unique event that can't be replicated under similar circumstances by, in many cases, fairly ordinary men.
So while I didn't particularly enjoy what I read of this book, it did give me a lot to think about, both in regards to the format of the book and the study of history.
I will say though that the cover is very eye-catching and wonderfully creepy!
Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book from Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.
I decided to put this book down because it wasn't really holding my attention.
I think that my expectations for the book were different than what was delivered. I was expecting something that perhaps provided insight into dictators and tyrants but in reality, the stories are more like vignettes from their life. Some of them were very strange and just seemed to meander onwards without a destination in mind.
I'm also conflicted over what I think could have improved the book. On one hand, I believe that there should have been some context to these historical figures (admittedly, I had to search a few of them on Wikipedia as my area of historical study has mainly been focused on Canada). Context, in the form of a page documenting who the person grew up to be and why they are known as a tyrant would have been chilling in contrast to the stories. On the other hand, I also know that it is important in studying history to understand that each person is human: Pol Pot, Chairman Mao, Stalin, Hitler, etc. each committed acts of unspeakable evil, but they are not in fact, monsters. In many ways, these stories reminded me that demonizing historical figures is never helpful, as it does not allow you to be critical and it puts us into a false sense of security, thinking that it is a unique event that can't be replicated under similar circumstances by, in many cases, fairly ordinary men.
So while I didn't particularly enjoy what I read of this book, it did give me a lot to think about, both in regards to the format of the book and the study of history.
I will say though that the cover is very eye-catching and wonderfully creepy!
Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book from Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.
September 2, 2013
History tends to give us names of people whose actions seem to be shocking and brutish. But does that history lesson really go into the lives of those "evil monsters" and tell us about what made up those individuals. One must turn to an intelligent piece of literature to give us an insight of what made those people into who they were. The Iron Bridge by Anton Piatigorsky is such a novel.
Page 11- Tea is Better than Pepsi (Idi Amin)
It's the last Friday of the month. Payday. There will be no sleep tonight for this weary young assistant cook. The yelling and kicking mass will storm around the field for hours, keeping everyone awake. At down the drunken soldiers will stumble back to their huts, crooning and cursing each other, vomiting in the bushes, just when dupis like Idi have to rise for their kitchen duties. He has finished cleaning dishes and wouldn't mind a beer himself, but a dup can't drink all night. He has real responsibilities, as the platoon sergeant has made perfectly clear on several occasions. Who else will cook for the men?
Piatigorsky has researched the lives of six of modern history dictators and written a segment of what their younger lives might have been like. We get a shocking yet familiar insight to some of these lives and what may have caused this people to become powerful and cruel.
link to my complete review
Page 11- Tea is Better than Pepsi (Idi Amin)
It's the last Friday of the month. Payday. There will be no sleep tonight for this weary young assistant cook. The yelling and kicking mass will storm around the field for hours, keeping everyone awake. At down the drunken soldiers will stumble back to their huts, crooning and cursing each other, vomiting in the bushes, just when dupis like Idi have to rise for their kitchen duties. He has finished cleaning dishes and wouldn't mind a beer himself, but a dup can't drink all night. He has real responsibilities, as the platoon sergeant has made perfectly clear on several occasions. Who else will cook for the men?
Piatigorsky has researched the lives of six of modern history dictators and written a segment of what their younger lives might have been like. We get a shocking yet familiar insight to some of these lives and what may have caused this people to become powerful and cruel.
link to my complete review
October 4, 2012
*RECEIVED AS A FIRST READS GIVEAWAY*
I think that I was looking forward to this book too much and grew my expectations out of proportion. I also need to loan my copy to a friend so I have someone to discuss this with. I'm hovering on the like it/really like it rating designation.
I found it an interesting imagining of these young future dictators personalities and circumstances that may have helped shape them. I think I was hoping for a bit more of an insight into their progression as adolescents rather than a snapshot of one day/one seemingly arbitrary event.
I do feel that the short look at their personalities was very well done, and would have liked more of a focus on how they reacted to a situation more than the explanation of the situation they found themselves in.
Worth a read if you are a political junkie, history buff or historical fiction reader.
I think that I was looking forward to this book too much and grew my expectations out of proportion. I also need to loan my copy to a friend so I have someone to discuss this with. I'm hovering on the like it/really like it rating designation.
I found it an interesting imagining of these young future dictators personalities and circumstances that may have helped shape them. I think I was hoping for a bit more of an insight into their progression as adolescents rather than a snapshot of one day/one seemingly arbitrary event.
I do feel that the short look at their personalities was very well done, and would have liked more of a focus on how they reacted to a situation more than the explanation of the situation they found themselves in.
Worth a read if you are a political junkie, history buff or historical fiction reader.
July 6, 2013
This is, on paper, a very interesting take on some of the most infamous figures in history.
While the stories are very well written, I couldn't help but feel that I was a little bit disappointed.
I don't why the stories don't gel as well as they should do because Piatigorsky is a good writer but I just couldn't get as hooked on the stories as much as I had hoped I would.
For the review please follow the link.
http://curiosityofasocialmisfit.blogs...
While the stories are very well written, I couldn't help but feel that I was a little bit disappointed.
I don't why the stories don't gel as well as they should do because Piatigorsky is a good writer but I just couldn't get as hooked on the stories as much as I had hoped I would.
For the review please follow the link.
http://curiosityofasocialmisfit.blogs...
March 19, 2015
These short stories imagine early life experiences or incidents of six adolescent boys who would become the world's most brutal dictators. They each represent an experience that may have foreshadowed their adult rise to power. There isn't factual information here, but the Canadian playwright Piatigorsky has presented plausible scenarios and supporting characters: Joseph Stalin as a student in a seminary; Idi Amin a cook for a British colonial regiment; Mao as a teenager in an arranged marriage. Very creative and well-crafted stories.
October 6, 2013
Exquisitely crafted vignettes of some of the men who went on to become reviled dictators. Piatigorsky, a play write as well as author, crafts each sketch with an economy of prose. You never end up liking the men (who will always be thought of as monsters), but you can't help being fascinated by this moment in time glimpse of them before they realized their terrifying potentials.
January 10, 2015
I was really intrigued by the premise of this book. It's a series of short stories about dictators as children and the events that made them who they were (fictionalized). However, each story was really similar and seemed to involve graphic sexual experiences, which turned me off. I read about half of the stories and lost interest.
September 15, 2012
I was really excited to read this book and while it was interesting, it wasn:t quite what I expected. I guess that was the objective of the author though. Well written.
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