The Infernal Library: On Dictators, the Books They Wrote, and Other Catastrophes of Literacy

by Daniel Kalder

"A mesmerizing study of books by despots great and small, from the familiar to the largely unknown."
— The Washington Post

A darkly humorous tour of "dictator literature" in the twentieth century, featuring the soul-killing prose and poetry of Hitler, Mao, and many more, which shows how books have sometimes shaped the world for the worse

Since the days of the Roman Empire dictators have written books. But in the twentieth-century despots enjoyed unprecedented print runs to (literally) captive audiences. The titans of the genre—Stalin, Mussolini, and Khomeini among them—produced theoretical works, spiritual manifestos, poetry, memoirs, and even the occasional romance novel and established a literary tradition of boundless tedium that continues to this day.

How did the production of literature become central to the running of regimes? What do these books reveal about the dictatorial soul? And how can books and literacy, most often viewed as inherently positive, cause immense and lasting harm? Putting daunting research to revelatory use, Daniel Kalder asks and brilliantly answers these questions.

Marshalled upon the beleaguered shelves of The Infernal Library are the books and commissioned works of the century’s most notorious figures. Their words led to the deaths of millions. Their conviction in the significance of their own thoughts brooked no argument. It is perhaps no wonder then, as Kalder argues, that many dictators began their careers as writers.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Books About Books, Politics, Biography, Psychology, Historical

384 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 6, 2018

Reviews

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have to pay tribute to the author for the astonishing amount of background reading he undertook for this book. Whilst it’s not uncommon for non-fiction authors to do so, surely no other will have had to read so much dross in order to undertake his research? In the section about Mein Kampf, even the few extracts the author provided were enough to turn my stomach, so there’s no way I could have read the whole thing. Distressingly, it seems that Mein Kampf continues to sell well in a number of middle eastern countries, especially it seems, in Turkey.

The book begins with a separate chapter for each of the “Big Five” 20th century dictators; Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler and Mao, and then moves through a variety of smaller fish such as Salazar, Franco, various Soviet Bloc puppets, Nasser, Ghaddafi, Khomeini, Castro, Saddam Hussein, the Kim Dynasty etc. He ends with the recent dictators of Turkmenistan, who along with Kim-Jong-un, seem to produce books that are closest in spirit to the great dictators of the last century. I probably found the section on Mussolini one of the more interesting chapters, along with the one about Mao and the malign influence of his Little Red Book.

One aspect I didn’t particularly like was that the text is quite heavy with sarcasm. The author seems to use this more with the communist dictators, perhaps because of the enormous gap between what they said they were going to do and what they actually did. Maybe he included this element to lighten the description of the turgid books he was writing about. He also seems to derive some amusement from the execution of Saddam Hussein and the grisly deaths of Mussolini and Ghaddafi. I’m happy to agree that in each case the world became a slightly better place without them, but still, the tone seemed uncalled for.

Unsurprisingly, the author is critical of almost all of the books written, which raises the question as to why he chose his subject matter. He says himself that part of the reason was that no-one else had done it. I understand that reasoning, as it’s rare these days to encounter a field of study that hasn’t already been ploughed. Beyond that, he suggests that people might have understood the dictators better if they had actually read their work. For example, prior to Khomeini taking power in Iran, various American and European “intellectuals” told us how he was a peace-loving man with a concern for human rights, and how the notion of an Islamic State did not mean giving supervisory powers to clerics (!).

I take the author’s point, but I’m not convinced that people would ever approach these sorts of books with an open mind. People will see what they want to see.

His other conclusion is that we should never be complacent about dictators-in-waiting. Past examples suggest they can move from obscurity into power quite quickly. He ends with a thoughtful piece about changes in technology and how they may affect dictator literature. Social media has seen the spontaneous formation of online mobs who dehumanise their opponents, exactly what the dictators themselves specialised in.

In summary, a mixed bag. One of those books where I enjoyed some aspects but was less impressed with others.

[George Kaslov · Rating 4 out of 5]

While walking the streets of Eastern Europe from time to time you will see mountains of books thrown out for anyone to take with them. Like any good bibliophile you would descend upon this potential treasure only to find tomes and tomes of Marxist Leninist theory and walk away in utter disappointment. Few times I did look into these books and every time I lost quite a few brain cells. I was still kind of curious about these books but I couldn't go through them out of self preservation.

Luckily that is where Daniel Kalder comes in. Thank you for your service.

Unlike me the author was inspired by an ad he saw on Russian television for a gaudy tome written by the then ruler/dictator of Turkmenistan. He wanted to learn why these books were written, who prints them, who buys them and what happens to these books with the change of guard. But most importantly, WHY ARE THEY ALL SO BAD when these figures led such interesting lives (historically speaking).

Expectedly he mostly covered the "golden age" of 20th century dictator literature (Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini), who he treats as the first generation. As time goes on he covers other dictators and their literary careers, even entering the 21st century. Luckily for us today s dictators don't write books as much anymore, but that is because they don't need to anymore with radio, TV and internet. The amount of research here is mind boggling and soul destroying because of all the either vile shit these tyrants were saying or quasi intellectual slop they were trying to serve to the millions. While presenting all of these "ideas" and their context you can understand the authors sarcastic tone throughout the book. I did find this sarcastic tone rather entertaining, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was a self preservation measure.

There are 3 main lessons the author tries to convey. One, if a wanna be dictator writes a book before coming to power you can be assured that he will do what he said he wants to do in the said book. Two, if the book is written during their reign it is usually to feed their ego out of some intellectual inferiority complex or just pure propaganda and those can just be automatically thrown away. And finally three, if they write fiction, which is incredibly rare, especially during their reign those books can provide invaluable glimpses into their inner lives to analysts and historians; writing is still bad though.

If the fall of socialism gave me anything tangible it is that I didn't have to ever read Lenin in school, so there is that at least.

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disclaimer: ARC via Netgalley

I have to admit, I almost didn’t request this title from Netgalley. It wasn’t that the topic, a study of works by dictators, didn’t sound interesting. It did, but there also seemed a possibility for dryness, and I really wasn’t in the mood. But I requested it anyway.

I am very happy I did. Mr. Kalder, I am sorry for thinking it would be dry.

Honesty, you know you are in good hands when the book starts, “This is a book about dictator literature – that is to say, it is a book about the canon of works written or attributed to dictators. As such, it is a book about some of the worst books ever written, and so was excruciatingly painful to research.”

Kalder took one for the team, and quite frankly, we should repay him by reading this book.

The book isn’t so much literary criticism; though Kalder does not shy away from calling a bad book a bad book. For instance, on The Green Book, “it is not merely boring, or banal, or repetitive, or nonsensical, although it is certainly all those things. It is quite simply, stupid . . . “.

And he is fair, for Kalder notes of Mussolini’s bodice ripper (which isn’t really one apparently) that it is readable.

His survey of literature starts with the Russian revolution and includes present day dictators. Kalder is also as funny as, well, Monty Python.

What Kalder does is look at not only what the writings reveal about the dictators, but also why people didn’t take the books seriously as warnings of things to come. He points out that some people should have known better. He also connects it to the thinking and control process, showing how the works did reflect the personality of each man (and they are all men). He also addresses the weird beliefs that make their way into the books – Hussain had strange ideas about bears.

The book is an entertaining journey into some really strange minds that produced some really bad literature. Luckily for the reader, Kalder read it for us.

[hayatem · Rating 5 out of 5]

"في حين أن ليس هناك ماهو أسهل من إدانة الأشرار، فلا شيء أكثر صعوبة من فهمهم."—دويستويفسكي.

دراسة فكرية و فلسفية عن أدب الطغاة. تناول فيها المؤلف عدة أوجه وصور من مثل لينين، ستالين، موسوليني ، هتلر، ماو تسي تونغ، وآخرون.

أذكر هنا بعض المؤلفات والأعمال الواردة في المادة:
كتاب: «تطوُّر الرأسمالية في روسيا»-لينين
كتاب: مالعمل؟ ( المسائل الملحة لحركتنا)- لينين.
أسس اللينينية - ل جوزيف ستالين.
تاريخ الحزب الشيوعي في الاتحاد السوفيتي ( البلاشفة): الدراسة القصيرة. جوزيف ستالين.
الفاشية نظرياتها وفلسفتها- موسوليني.
الثورة والدولة - موسوليني.
كفاحي - هتلر.
تقرير عن استجلاء حركة الفلاحين في هونان ( 1927) - ماو تسي تونغ
كما كتب ماو قصائد منوعة أذكر على سبيل المثال لا الحصر ؛ "قصيدة المسيرة الطويلة"، "عن النسوة المسلحات."، " فقدت حكيمتي الفخورة".
كتاب عن الديمقراطية الجديدة- ماو تسي تونغ.
في المشاكل الاستيراجية للحرب الثورية في الصين ( 1936) وعن الحرب المطولة (1938)-ماو تسي تونغ.

تناول في الشرح قراءة الكتب والمناهج والنظريات التي وضعوها، والفلسفات والسياسات الاجتماعية التي أرادوا نشرها لإشاعة رؤاهم وإحكام سيطرتهم بإشعار المحكومين بنظامهم ونظرياتهم في السلطة التي لا ترحم المخالفين. و لنيل هالة القداسة-ترسيخاً لمفهوم "عبادة الشخصية"، وإثارة تابعيهم، ومد جذور لعقائدهم في التاريخ الإنساني.
قرأ المؤلف في نتاجاتهم و سعة انتشارها في زمانهم، وما حققته من رواج ومبيعات والعكس، وكيف بلغ مداها يوماً وكيف صار حالها اليوم في عالمنا عالم القراءة. وعن أثرها اللاحق. مع ذكر أسماء الكتّاب الذين تأثروا بهم وأثروا مخيلتهم وكتاباتهم.

الفلسفة الأكثر انتشارًا في مؤلفاتهم كانت : الفلسفة الماركسية اللينينية والتي تصدرت المشهد؛ و هي تيار إيديولوجي شيوعي برز كاتجاه سائد بين الأحزاب الشيوعية في عشرينيات القرن العشرين وتم تبنيها كأساس أيديولوجي للأممية الشيوعية خلال فترة حكم القائد ستالين. و الماوية؛ وهي مجموعة متنوعة من الماركسية اللينينية التي طورها ماو تسي تونغ لتحقيق ثورة اشتراكية في المجتمع الزراعي ما قبل الصناعي لجمهورية الصين وبعد ذلك جمهورية الصين الشعبية. الفرق الفلسفي بين الماوية والماركسية اللينينية هو أن الفلاحين هم الطليعة الثورية في مجتمعات ما قبل الصناعة وليس البروليتاريا. والماركسية اللينينية الماوية هي نظرية شيوعية ثورية تستند إلى أفكار ماركس و إنجلز ولينين وستالين، وبخلاف الأحزاب الشيوعية التقليدية تبرز هذه النظرية أفكار القائد الشيوعي الصيني ماو تسي تونغ وتعتبرها تطويراً خلاقاً للماركسية اللينينية.

كتاب تعيد من خلاله قراءة تاريخ طغاة غيروا وجه الزمان.
رائع!

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great book about awful people and unreadable books and, for those like me who grew up long before the implosion of the Soviet Union, I can remember that there were an awful lot of people, supposedly intelligent people - academics, historians, economists, political pundits etc. who took these dreadful books way too seriously.

The book is a great introduction to some really extraordinary books - and while it is amusing to read about Mussolini's novel 'The Cardinals Mistress' (when I was at school in Ireland back in the 1970s both I and my history teacher longed to know if the had ever been translated - it had and thanks to the internet anyone can find copies of the book) - so many of the other books dealt with - the turgid products of Hoxha, Brezhnev, Andropov and their ghastly satellite stooges in Eastern Europe never mind the various Kim's of North Korea inflicted not just unimaginable boredom on their countrymen and women but were part of the apparatus of repression that brought real misery and death to so many. Giggling over their poor prose seems in unforgivably bad taste when we keep those horrors at the forefront of our minds. But it is very hard to resist.

[Kusaimamekirai · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living." -Karl Marx

Who would want to read a book about some of the most despicable dictators the world has ever known, writing books? Clearly at least, the author and myself. I was genuinely excited for this book not only because of its unique premise, but also because I’ve always been fascinated by how men drunk on power (and it is almost always men it seems) see the world they preside over. What better way to understand this than through their writing?
As one might expect, there seems to be a correlation between the stultifying nature of absolute power and bad, bad writing. These excerpts from the likes of Mao, Stalin, Hitler and others were not easy to read. I felt more than a little sympathy for the poor author who forced himself to read works like “Mein Kampf” in its disgusting entirety or slog through the hundreds of volumes of Stalin’s musings. It makes one wonder, as the author does:

Many people regard books and reading as innately positive, as if compilations of bound paper with ink on them in and of themselves represent a uniquely powerful medicine for the soul. However, a moment’s reflection reveals that this is not even slightly true: books and reading can also cause immense harm. To take just one example: had Stalin’s mother never sent him to the seminary then he never would have learned to read and never would have discovered the works of Marx or Lenin. Instead, he would have been a drunken cobbler like his father, or perhaps a small-time gangster in Tbilisi. He would still have spread misery, but on a much smaller scale, and the twentieth century might have been considerably less awful as a result.

It’s an interesting argument which I don’t fully agree with but I can see his point. Would an illiterate Stalin have caused the destruction the literate one did? It seems unlikely. What can’t be argued is that these men during their lifetimes wrote mountains of borderline unreadable but highly influential works that in many cases presaged the direction their lives would take. Anyone who bothered to read “Mein Kampf” (few did) at its publication could have seen where the diminutive Austrian corporal was headed. Or take the Ayatollah Khomeini who before the revolution of 1979 and hanging out in the cafes of Paris, had written lots of fire and brimstone about destroying Jews and enemies of Islam, but few outside of Iran bothered to read him. Even American State Department officials who were shockingly short of Farsi speakers didn’t read his writings and instead, as one official wrote, considered him to be “like Gandhi”.
However, it is not always dictators who are menacing the world producing bad literature (Mussolini and Sadaam Hussein wrote florid romance novels which would make you blush while Momar Gaddafi wrote long treatises on the anatomical differences between men and women) but also small time tyrants who were more than happy to spread misery exclusively to their little patch of earth. The best example of this comes form the former ruler of Turkmenistan who wrote a “sacred” book and proceeded to plaster it over every facet of his peoples daily lives:

He was not the most cruel, nor the most belligerent, nor even the most geopolitically significant of dictators, but he was the most colorful since Gaddafi, and perhaps he outdid even the colonel on that score. Who else had banned gold teeth and lip synching, and the ballet and opera, and the circus and smoking? Who else had renamed the month of January after himself and bread after his mother? Who else had a golden statue that stood atop a tripod with its arms held aloft, revolving throughout the day so that the sun was always in its grasp?

So what is the lesson here? Or is there one? The author argues that while the 20th century produced the worst of the worst, we should not be too complacent to assume that we have outgrown this in the 21st century. There is always someone, somewhere, with ambition and a ruthlessness geared toward oppressing his/her people and they most likely have already produced some awful literature describing what they will do when they reach their goal. Perhaps it is incumbent on us to be ever vigilant for these works and prevent the rise of those who write them before it's too late.

[Soňa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinujúca a súčasne vtipná kniha o nepotlačiteľnej potrebe veľkých i malých diktátorov obšťastňovať svet písaným slovom.
Už od čias Rímskej ríše mali diktátori nutkanie písať knihy. Ale až v dvadsiatom storočí došlo priam k erupcii tejto diktátorskej obsesie. Titani tohto žánru ako napríklad Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Mao či Chomejní produkovali teoretické diela, duchovné manifesty, básnické zbierky, memoáre, ba občas aj poklesnuté romance ako na bežiacom páse. A nekonečná záplava diktátorskej makulatúry dodnes celkom neopadla.

Daniel Kalder v tejto brilantne a so sarkastickým nadhľadom napísanej knihe hľadá – a nachádza – odpovede na základné otázky tohto literárneho žánru: prečo a ako sa produkovanie písaného slova tohto typu, nazývaného z neznámych dôvodov literatúrou, stalo jedným z kľúčových pilierov diktátorských režimov? Čo odhaľujú tieto diela o diktátorovej duši? Ako môžu knihy a gramotnosť všeobecne, o ktorých pozitívnom vplyve nikto seriózny nepochybuje, spôsobovať toľko zla? Ako je možné, že sú knihy na škodu sveta?

Tááááááááák, konečne dočítané. Dobrovoľne priznávam, že to bolo "ukrutne bolestivé" a to som ten výskum nerobila ja. Len som o ňom čítala. Ale začnime pozítivami, je to jednoznačne kolos čo sa týka informácií o daných dielach a autoroch (osobne by som asi do toho nešla, ale som rada, že sa niekto hodil za vlasť). Prvá časť sa venuje "slávnej päťke" (súkromné pomenovanie, upozorňujem) - čiže grupke Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler a Mao. Tu je veľmi podrobne opísaný vzostup celej ideológie a jej následkov. Zaujal ma podrobný opis, historický výskum i myšlienkový postup, ktorý jednotlivých diktátorov doviedol od biednych začiatkov až na výslnie slávy... a teda aj k celému aparátu, ktorý im mal pomôcť sa na tom výslní udržať. Smutné na tom je, že to výslnenie si chceli udržať práve písaným slovom a jeho nadmernou produkciou.....
Druhá časť sa venuje rôznym mutáciam, alebo jednoduchšie povedané diktátorom, ktorých možno všetci nepoznajú prípadne nevedia o nich tak veľa. Toto bola pre mňa asi najzaujímavejšia časť - dozvedieť sa o diktátoroch v Ibérii, či ako veľmi "bezmozgové" kopírovanie bežalo vo všetkých socialistických satelitoch počas studenej vojny až po čo sa dialo v Afrike a v Ázii.
Tretia časť je venovaná dielam, ktoré vznikli po zániku "Matičky Rusi" a celého kolosu okolo. Aj napriek tomu, ostali krajiny, kde sa nejaká verzia -izmu a kultu osobnosti uživila a prežila aj do dnešných dní.
Potiaľ všetko v pohode a veľa info na spokojné uspatie všetkých mačiatok. Až na záver, kde teda autor polemizuje, že v Amerike by sa to nikdy nemohlo udiať (???) - lebo proste tam na to nie je priestor.... to si asi mysleli viacerí a ľaľa, takže až taká jednoznačná by som ako autor nebola.
Druhé mačiatko padá na sarkazmus a iróniu. I keď ich mám rada, používam a nevadia mi, v tejto knihe a tomto štýle mi to príde ako zbytočnosť a znižovanie úrovne celej knihy. Posúdťe sami:

Skôr vyznieva ako dielo šikovného autodidakta bez náležitého poznania, utápajúceho sa vo vlastnej domýšľavosti.
Čo je teda fašizmus, táto úžasná myšlienka, ktorá sa zrodila v lebke muža guľatej ako nábojnica, ktorý tak ohromil Gándhího, že ho vyhlásil za "spasiteľa nového Talianska"?

Hoci Hitler nevrlo pripúšťa, že „praktické predmety" sú potrebné, tento polotalentovaný maliar, amatérsky historik a milovník opery tvrdí, že „humanistické predmety" stoja vyššie. V krátkosti: všetko, v čom bol Hitler zlý, by sa malo obmedziť alebo zakázať, a všetko, čo mal rád, by sa malo podporovať - sen znudených školákov všade na svete.

HOCI KAŽDÝ DIKTÁTOR v tejto knihe viedol rušný život, Mao bohužiaľ do svojich početných obletov okolo slnka napchal toho viac než dosť. Keďže ho marxistické svetlo osvietilo v živote dosť neskoro v porovnaní s takým Leninom či Stalinom, nemárnil čas, pustil sa hneď do diela a strávil nasledujúce zhruba tri desaťročia v bojoch občianskych vojen, prežil Stalinovu paranoju, otriasol sa po katastrofálnych porážkach, prekabátil svojich rivalov v strane, bojoval proti Japoncom a viedol darebácke komunistické miništáty, než sa stal konečným víťazom boja o kontrolu nad celou Čínou.

Francova autorská stratégia pri vydávaní kníh prezrádza, že to bol jeden z najsebavedomejších spisovateľov-diktátorov, skutočný nacionalista, spokojný s tým, že nudí iba svoje domáce čitateľstvo a necháva ostatný svet na pokoji.

Problémom je, že je to naskrze hrozná kniha, dokonca aj podľa mimoriadne nízkych štandardov diktátorskej literatúry. Môj výtlačok Zelenej knihy má iba 173 strán, pričom tento počet Kaddáfí dosahuje použitím veľmi veľkého fontu. V knihe nie sú citáty a ani žiadne náznaky, či vôbec Kaddáfí niekedy nejakú knihu prečítal (hoci možno čítal nejaké novinové články). Zelená kniha je nielen nudná, banálna, repetitívna, nezmyselná, hoci nepochybne všetko toto o nej platí. Je jednoducho tupá a ako taká sa vari s výnimkou Mein Kampfu nedá porovnať so žiadnou inou knihou nejakého diktátora. Napriek tomu ju Kaddáfí takmer štyridsať rokov vnucoval svojmu národu a rozširoval po svete prostredníctvom inštitútov zameraných na jej propagáciu. Ak nedosiahla Maovu úroveň všadeprítomnosti, tak nie preto, že by sa o to nesnažil. Čo je teda v nej?
Priklad: Ženy sú ženy a muži sú muži. Podľa gynekológov ženy menštruujú každý mesiac, kým muži, súc mužmi, nemenštruujú a nemajú isté obdobie v mesiaci bolesti. Žena, súc ženou, prirodzenou cestou každý mesiac krváca. Ak nekrváca, je tehotná. Ak je tehotná, stáva sa, vďaka tehotenstvu, menej aktívnou zhruba na jeden rok, čo znamená, že sú vážne znížené všetky jej prirodzené aktivity, kým neporodí. Keď' porodí dieťa alebo potratí, prežíva ťažké šestonedelie, ktoré nasleduje po pôrode alebo potrate. Muž nemôže otehotnieť, nie je tak uspôsobený ako ženy, aby prežíval také ťažkosti. Potom žena dojčí dieťa, ktoré porodila. Dojčenie trvá asi dva roky. Dojče nie znamená, že žena nie je oddeliteľná od svojho dieťaťa a že jej aktivita je tým vážne znížená. Stáva sa priamo zodpovednou za inú osobu, ktorej pomáha v jej biologických funkciách; bez tejto pomoci by dotyčná osoba zomrela. Na druhej strane muž nielenže nemôže počať, ale ani nedojčí. Koniec gynekologického hlásenia!

Ale uhasínanie revolučného zápalu neznamenalo, že starnúci vodcovia prestali generovať texty. Naopak, bolo potrebné chrliť knihy a nimi dokazovať kontinuitu s minulosťou, demonštrovať, že sa stále podieľajú na tradíciách, započatých zakladateľmi viery. Väčšina týchto kníh bola ukážkovým príkladom ultranudy, hoci svet komunistického písania nebol ešte celkom mŕtvy. Teda väčšinou mŕtvy bol, to áno a vždy ukrutne prázdny, no na okraji tejto mohutnej epidémie,teoretickej" slovnej hnačky bolo ešte možné zazrieť mutantné formy, prízračných hrbáčov a trojchvostých psov, behajúcich bez obojka za mestskými hradbami, nie už celkom v dosahu moci Moskvy.

Takže aj keď kniha obsahuje veľa zaujímavých a poučných vecí, ktoré by sme mali vedieť, sarkazmus dotiahnutý do majstrovstva ju ťahá dole, a ako som zistila, nie som jediná komu občasné narážky na neschopnosť autorov prekážali - pozdáva sa mi recenzia od Knižného Predátora a v angličtine mi padla do oka tá od Jacqueline.
Aj preto udeľujem len 3 socialistické mačiatka, ktoré sa nechystajú nič spísať, ale ostanú driemať o vlastnom kulte osobnosti aj keď im niekto bude predčítať knižný brak zo všetkých -izmov.

Prvá veta: Toto je kniha o literatúre diktátorov - presnejšie povedané, je to kniha o kanóne diel, ktoré napísali diktátori alebo ktoré sú im pripisované. Ako taká je to teda kniha o knihách, ktoré patria k tomu najhoršiemu, čo bolo napísané a v tomto zmysle to bolo z hľadiska výskumu aj ukrutne bolestivé.
Posledná veta: Ale hranica medzi dobrom a zlom leží v srdci každej ľudskej bytosti. A kto je ochotný zničiť kus vlastného života?

Goodreads Challenge 2021: 34. kniha

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sarcasm, parody, absurdism and irony are great ways to strip off stuff’s mask and show the unpleasant reality behind it. The problem is that once the rules of art are debunked, and once the unpleasant realities the irony diagnoses are revealed and diagnosed, “then” what do we do? Irony’s useful for debunking illusions, but most of the illusion-debunking in the U.S. has now been done and redone. Once everybody knows that equality of opportunity is bunk and Mike Brady’s bunk and Just Say No is bunk, now what do we do? All we seem to want to do is keep ridiculing the stuff. Postmodern irony and cynicism’s become an end in itself, a measure of hip sophistication and literary savvy. Few artists dare to try to talk about ways of working toward redeeming what’s wrong, because they’ll look sentimental and naive to all the weary ironists. Irony’s gone from liberating to enslaving. There’s some great essay somewhere that has a line about irony being the song of the prisoner who’s come to love his cage.

-- David Foster Wallace, in Burn, Stephen J (ed.), Conversations with David Foster Wallace, p. 48.

This quote, which Wallace made in different forms in various interviews throughout his life, is starting to appear so often that it is now edging into cliché, but it is appropriate here, I feel, because this is a perfectly good book which, if not ruined, is certainly lessened by frequent unwelcome sarcastic asides. The author explains that the sheer unadulterated badness of dictator literature drove him into an emotional state, which is certainly reasonable. However, a writer may write in an emotional state, but then should edit in an unemotional state. If the writer cannot bring himself to do this, he should hire someone to do it before his or her book sees the light of day.

An example: Kalder twice punctuates particularly asinine quotations of dictator nonsense by the one-word sentence: “Quite” (Kindle locations 3077 and 3826 of my egalley copy). If we, the readers, have picked up a book and noticed that the title calls books by dictators “catastrophes of literature”, then it seems reasonable to assume that we will be able to tell that idiotic quotes are idiotic. We don't need a flag, even a one-word flag, from the author. We are smart enough to know idiocy when it is presented to us.

There are many longer examples of author sarcasm in this book.

The sarcasm is a shame, because there are plenty of good ideas, too. For example, the author discusses the soul-killing aspect of living in a society where dictator-written books are published in large quantity. These books invariably accompany a cult of personality for the leader. Failure to participate in the cult may result in, at best, an inability to access state-distributed benefits (a vacation dacha, adequate medical care), or, at worst, imprisonment. So people invariable buy these books because, after all, they are usually very reasonably priced, and prominently displaying the great leader's volumes in your living room will deprive malevolent neighbors a pretext of ratting you out as insufficiently worshipful or, if you are ratted out, provide a more convincing backdrop for your protestations of innocence should you be unfortunate enough to attract the attentions of the internal security apparatus. People tell themselves there's no harm in doing what you must to survive in a dictatorship, but there's something soul-destroying about having to gaze, every day, at these books, sitting accusingly on your bookshelves, telling you that you, too, are going along with the lie that the dictator is a great man, evidence of your complicity and cowardice staring at you ceaselessly from a prominent place in your home.

Lest I give the impression that the author gives Western liberal democracy a gold star and a free pass, let me also include a well-turned (to make clear: that adjective is NOT sarcasm) comment on the current state of US political rhetoric:

In the United States, however, it seems that we are forever standing on the edge of a political precipice, that a new Hitler or Stalin is forever waiting in the wings to impose tyranny as soon as he is able. The carelessness with which extreme historical analogies are drawn and the frequency with which apocalyptic prophecies are uttered might be amusing were they not so exhausting and did these jeremiads not have so detrimental an effect upon thinking about what is actually happening in the world.

In summary, an OK book that could have been a lot better.

Note: The “great essay somewhere” that Wallace refers to in the blockquote at the top is "Alcohol & Poetry: John Berryman and the Booze Talking" by Lewis Hyde. The quote there is: "Irony has only emergency use. Carried over time it is the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy their cage." The essay is available as a 20-page (unsearchable) .pdf here. The quote appears on page 16. Thanks to reddit contributor “yee-lum”, who did the detective work on this quote and posted the results here.

I received a free electronic galley copy of this book for review. Thanks to NetGalley and Henry Holt and Co. for their generosity.

[Knižný (Valéria Scholtzová) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Zaujímavá kniha, ktorá ponúka vyčerpávajúci prehľad literárnych diel diktátorov počnúc Leninom. Okrem tých  známych, ako sú Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Mao, sa tu nachádzajú aj menej známi diktátori.
Prvá polovica knihy sa mi čítala ľahšie ako druhá, keďže sa v nej v dlhších kapitolách venuje známejším menám. V druhej časti som si musela robiť medzi jednotlivými osobami prestávky, aby sa mi nezliali dokopy.
Je zaujímavé, ako sa osud a život mnohých diktátorov na seba podobal. Cez detstvo, vzdelanie, až po samotné prebratie moci. A to nezávisle od krajiny, či náboženstva.
Asi najvýraznejšou myšlienkou, ktorú si z Pekelnej knižnice odnesiem je tá, že väčšina kníh bola nudná a zle napísaná. A to sa netýka len politických traktátov, ale aj beletrie, drámy a poézie. Často som sa už nudila aj ja a ľutovala autora, že to všetko prečítal. 

Ďalší výrazný poznatkom pre mňa bolo, že každý diktátor používa strach a obviňovanie iných, aby presadil svoj režim. Najčastejšie sa vyskytovali nepriatelia ako Židia, či menšiny. No a samozrejme úpadok náboženstva, kultúry a rodiny. Teda okrem komunistov, tým asi náboženský úpadok a zmena kultúry vyhovovali. 

Zaujímavý bol aj pohľad na rôzne kultúry, aj keď keby sme v rôznych výrokoch zakryli slová ako islam, či kresťanský, tak by vyzerali úplne rovnako.

Na knihe mi vadil nadradený humor autora. Je ľahké sa baviť na niečom, čo bolo, keď už je potom.
Takisto ma zarazila jeho neochvejná viera v to, že v Amerike by sa nemohol dostať k moci diktátor.

[Sharon Barrow Wilfong · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Infernal Library by Daniel Kalder is one of the best nonfiction books I’ve read in recent memory. He took a tedious subject and turned it into a rip roaring good history about the reading and writing habits of twentieth century tyrants.

Not only do we get to understand the historical background of the likes of Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini, Mao Zedong and others, he intertwines it with a fairly full biography. This provides the reader with the political and cultural context which inspired these bully boys to write and allowed them to rise to power.

It is impressive that he can write so colorfully and at times hilariously about plowing through the most tedious literature ever to blight the earth and brainwash millions. His use of hyperbolic adjectives, similes and metaphors perfectly drive home to the reader just how mind-numbing these works are. I applaud him that he survived. I never could wade through such evil tripe.

And there was plenty of it to be had. These guys apparently found writing reams of gibberish, turning reality on its head, and creating a Utopian fantasy centered around their own godhead, a type of narcotic. They got high on their ideas and the best part is they got to spray entire populations with their works like napalm.

Really, wouldn’t that be every writer’s fantasy? To force everyone in your country to buy and read your books? Think of the money to be had. No more begging an agent to read the first chapter or negotiating with a publishing company to print and distribute it. All the publishing companies would be arm wrestling each other to print it, since they knew that every single citizen was going to have to purchase it.

What fascinates me, and what Kalder gives less attention to (because it’s not the main thrust of his book) is how such bores got into power in the first place. Lenin wrote most of his theories in Switzerland and mostly against other Bolsheviks. Stalin wrote while exiled in Siberia, Hitler was in prison. In case anyone see a discrepancy with the previous paragraph, I should point out that most people were not reading their literature before these men came into power and were forced to.

Sources of inspiration for many of these despots were Nietsche, Karl Marx and Frederich Engels. Their literature in turn became inspirations for future megalomaniacs. After the fall of the Soviet Union, there were plenty of power mongers in the freshly autonomous satellite countries willing to take over and create their own utopias where everyone worshiped them. In Turkmanistan Turkmenbashi made his book required reading to pass a driver’s license test. His book lay alongside the Bible and Koran in churches and temples. In the bookstores, his book was all you could buy.

This book increases my fascinations with the personality cult. The rabid ecstasy that an entire population responds to their leader’s writings. Mao Zedong’s Red Scarf Revolution among the Chinese youth in the sixties is one example, but it was so in every country under a totalitarian regime. Young people are especially vulnerable to pie in the sky political and economic ideologies.

Speaking of Mao, I thought his writing particularly worthy of note, because he had to twist Marxism around to an unrecognizable shape in order to prove that it would work in a country that never had a proletarian generation. Amazing what a person can do with an army behind them to muscle in their own unique fantastical slant on another work of fantasy. But when the imagination is involved the possibilities are limitless.

I cannot comprehend how one person can wield that kind of power over so many. Not only physically, that comes later, but mentally, which is how they get into power in the first place. How can people allow themselves to become so brainwashed? They have to be getting something out of it.

Kalder deftly proves how literacy and education is not the magic wand to bippity boppity boo wham! produce an enlightened society. It depends on what you read and how you interpret what you read. It’s fine to read bunk, as long as you recognize it as bunk. What concerns me is that in today’s American Universities, students are not taught how to think but what to think when reading the great literature of the ages. Or they are not being taught to read it at all. Dead white males are to be avoided and female literature may only be read terough a feminist lens. Inferior literature is made required reading because the criteria has become the author’s race, gender and sexual orientation, rather than whether they can actually write well. This has had the undesirable effect of making young people, not only crippled with unrealistic expectations of the real world, but also makes them unbearable arrogant.

The only objection I have to Kalder's marvelous book is his comparison of these writings to the U.S. Constitution. Why he added this is a mystery, because the constitution was not written by tyrants who then brainwashed the population into bloodthirsty revolutionaries.

He seems to think it’s the same kind of personality cult that compels Americans to preserve the constitution in its original state (France and Italy change their constitution all the time!), as though to believe something is true is to be brainwashed. He should re-read some of his own points, namely, that as soon as a tyrant fell from power, his literature rapidly fell into oblivion. Lies can only persevere with an army behind them. True ideas, like, say, all men are created equal, endure.

I find it interesting to note that Kalder moved from his native Scotland to live in the Austin, Texas area. Hmmm….could it be that he prefers the opportunities and safe guards our “antiquated document” provides him? Perhaps he should not bite the hand that feeds him.

But lets not end on a negative note. This book is brilliant, the writer a genius at wit, a veritable D’Artagnon with the pen and I can not recommend this book too strongly.

[Jacqueline · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings about this book, which is annoying, because I really wanted to love it. I guess I'll paraphrase Longfellow, at the risk of sounding completely pretentious: "when it was good it was very, very good, and when it was bad it was..." To be completely fair, "horrid" is a bit extreme, because this book wasn't awful - it's just that I think it could have been better. I honestly felt the book could have been more balanced between history and analysis - sometimes (especially the early parts about Lenin, Stalin, and the USSR) I felt like the various works were getting lost in the wider history and context in which they were created, and perhaps that was the ultimate point, to see how these works were made, but... I don't know. On a more aesthetic level, while I can appreciate sarcasm and even enjoyed some of Kalder's snarkier moments, I sometimes felt the snark was distracting and that Kalder was (to give him the benefit of the doubt, likely unintentionally) mirroring the pretentious, overtly-theoretical prose which he spent much of his time dismissing.

Like I said, I don't know. It had a lot of good moments and it's definitely interesting, it's topical and relevant and I feel like I learned from it, but I'm not really sure I could honestly say I actually enjoyed reading it. But like its content, perhaps it's not so much meant to be enjoyed as it is meant to explain and teach.

[Kuszma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Volt egy olyan érzésem olvasás közben, hogy a kötet megszületésének valódi indoka, hogy Kalder kiadhassa végre magából azt a mérhetetlen mennyiségű morcot, ami a különböző diktátorok firkálmányainak olvasása során gyülemlett fel benne. Egyszerűen árad a sorokból a metsző szarkazmus, már-már maga alá temeti a témát, kifolyik a lapokról, szinte fürdőzhet benne az olvasó. Nem, nem populizmus ez – hanem az értékelő mámora, amit mi molyok is jól ismerünk: hogy ha már egyszer végig kellett kínlódnunk valami borzalmas könyvet, akkor legalább hadd húzzuk le Isten igazából, de úúúgy, hogy írója még haló poraiban is nyüszögni kezdjen tőle. Szerintem ez teljesen respektálható igény. Arról nem is beszélve, hogy meglátásom szerint a diktátorok – dúvadak. Folyamatos kilövési engedély van rájuk kiadva: akkor és úgy röhöghetjük ki őket, amikor és ahogy nekünk tetszik.

Mellesleg ne feledjük, a szerző valóban kemény fába vágta a fejszét, amikor végigrágta magát a diktátorirodalmon, és bizony sok tanulsággal mászott ki a nagy kupac förmedvény alól. Én például nem merném utána csinálni. Könyve számos éles eszű megállapítással, újszerű megközelítéssel* és kuriózummal szolgál, még ha ezek néha el is tűnnek a hektikus gúnyolódáshalmok alatt. Azzal pedig, hogy elemzi a kérdéses írásokat, természetesen többet vállal puszta szövegkritikánál: szőrmentén az autoriter elme pszichéjébe vezet be minket. A legnagyobb hibája tehát nézetem szerint nem a túlhajszolt szarkazmus, hanem egy dramaturgiai jellegű probléma, amiről a szerző vajmi kevéssé tehet. Jelesül: már a könyv első felében lelövi a nagyvadakat (Lenin, Sztálin, Mussolini, Hitler és Mao), így akik utánuk következnek, hozzájuk képest csupán kisstílű gazfickók tudnak lenni – persze a maguk léptékén ocsmány tömeggyilkosok, de mint diktátorírók, csak gyenge plagizátorok. Kadhafiban, Kim Dzsongilben, Szaddam Huszeinben, no meg persze a nagy és fenomenális Saparmyrat türkménbasiban azért felcsillan valami, és ez megmenti a kötetet az ellaposodástól, de összességében a kötet második fele soványabbnak tűnik az elsőnél. Ettől függetlenül én mindenkinek szeretettel ajánlom, mert kiválóan szórakoztam rajta. Felüdülés volt látni, hogy ezek a nagy emberek – élet és halál urai – mint írók és gondolkodók milyen incifinci kis elmécskék – az ember szinte úgy érzi, el lehet őket pöckölni a semmibe, akár egy bogarat a vállunkról. Bár hogy ilyen incifinci elmécskeként mégis nagy emberek tudtak lenni… hát ennek mikéntjéről jó lenne megkérdezni a népet, aki hatalomban tartotta őket.

* Visszatérő motívum például, hogy Kalder élcelődik a mítoszon, miszerint a művelt olvasó szükségszerűen jó ember is. Egyfelől igaza van, mert Khomeini vagy Sztálin valóban párját ritkítóan olvasottak voltak, és az is biztos, hogy bár Mao szerette és értékelte a jó verseket, ettől nem lett egy fikarcnyit sem jobb ember. Másfelől viszont ha el is fogadom, hogy a művelt emberek borzasztóak tudnak lenni, ha hatalomra kerülnek, de élek a gyanúperrel, a hatalomba kerüléshez ők is csak a műveletleneket használják létrának.

[Mizuki]

One reviewer mentioned the existence of a Mussolini’s bodice ripper, so this book definitely deserves some investigation!

[Azita Rassi · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting approach to dictators’ writings with a tongue-in-the-cheek tone that didn’t let the text become prosaic.

[Alex Sarll]

"Literacy, long upheld as a standard bearer of progress, is not always a force for good. Had Stalin been unable to read he would never have discovered the works of Marx or Lenin. Instead he probably would have ended up like his father – a cobbler by trade and a drunk by vocation."

The blurb sets out Kalder's stall pretty clearly. What it doesn't make wholly apparent is quite how thoroughly he opposes revolution. I'm far more of a gradualist than many of my friends, precisely because of how revolutions almost invariably spill a lot of blood on the way to creating a very slightly rejigged and generally much worse version of the system which existed beforehand. But even I raised an eyebrow* when he dismissed the Paris Commune as a "failed experiment in radical egalitarian living" and somehow contrary to human nature. If you omit mention of the external forces which contributed ever so slightly to that misleadingly impassive word 'failure', it looks shoddy, and agenda-led, and a bit like the very selective reading of the facts against which you're inveigling. And it really doesn't help if you say it lasted two months the first time, three months the next it's mentioned (two months ten days being the usual tally). So do bear that in mind. Evolving from a Guardian blog, this book is best regarded as kin to those comedy quest books, where someone goes around Wales with a camel or sticks a different domestic appliance up their arse each week or whatever. And considered as such, it's a great deal better than Dave Gorman (though frankly, what isn't?). But it's really not a serious work of political philosophy. Then again, as Kalder does point out, an awful lot of purported works of political philosophy, and ones at least briefly taken seriously even outside their authors' domains, have been considerably less informative and far, far less fun to read. And there is definitely something to investigate there. As Kalder notes early on, dictators lead fascinating lives, rich in rare experience; many are the great works of art *about* them. Yet despite obviously not being entirely stupid, or else they'd never have been able to seize control of a country, once you turn to literature *by* dictators they "almost always produce mind-numbing drivel. I wanted to know why". And it's not simply that nobody dares tell a dictator 'no'; many of them were writing before attaining power, and they were mostly dreadful then too. In at least one case Kalder infers that this may have been deliberate; he suggests that Lenin, aware ostensibly tedious books had more chance of making it past the Tsarist censors, deliberately cultivated a boring and orotund style to do likewise, and his heirs then took that as the nature of the form. Which...well, like I said, it's a good gag more than it's a fully convincing case, isn't it?

There are a lot of good gags, though, especially in the first half of the book, which deals with the 'canon': Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler and Mao. Truthfully, you could make a case for Mussolini belonging in the back with the also-rans, the tyranny in one country mob and the 'homunculi' who nominally ran Soviet client states – but both as a dictator and as a dictator-writer he was influential even without being that successful, a sort of Velvet Underground of brutality and bad writing. I mean, things get off to a pretty good start with a preface entitled 'Tradition and the Individual Tyrant', but that's a little abstruse compared to much of what follows. For instance, comparing Russian Party membership in 1907 to another loopy millenarian sect without the pretence of secularism, the Kropts, Kalder sets himself up with the conclusion that "Even at its peak, then, Marxism was not that much more popular than crushing men's testicles between hot plates". As many a moderately successful comedy event has shown before, taking the piss out of bad books is a fairly easy way to get a laugh, and when you're quite definitely punching up because these particular talentless hacks ran nations, well, then you can really go to town. Apart from anything else, Kalder has a real knack for identifying the subtle degrees and ways in which one evil bastard's awful book differs from another: "Throughout The Foundations of Leninism, Stalin's modest but real strengths as a writer are on display. He is clear and succinct, and good at summarizing complex ideas for a middlebrow audience: the Bill Bryson of dialectical materialism, minus the gags." Still, just as one is becoming aware of a risk that it's going to get a bit repetitive hearing how all these terrible people were terrible writers, there's honest, grudging praise for Mao's early prose (and a footnote which says Ho Chi Minh's poetry is even better) - and the usefulness of his strategies to other revolutionaries in less developed countries is admitted, as against the meaningless waffle so often found in dictatorial works of theory (though of course none of this excuses the superstitious reverence in which Mao quotations came to be held by a supposedly rational society, or the literal miracles attributed to them). Equally, for all his undoubted flaws Khomeini's prose is lucid, and the widely quoted passages suggesting he was obsessed with bumholes have been taken wildly out of context, and even Kim II's book on cinema turns out to be basically sensible. The most surprising recipient of mild praise is Saddam Hussein's first novel which, if not exactly good as such, is at least interesting in the way a true amateur production can be.

The second half of the book sometimes feels like it's dribbling out slightly - it deals with minor dictators, from Franco and Salazar to the Kims, and while not without interest (I knew very little about Salazar, who reminds me in an odd way of Theresa May were she genuinely strong and stable) there's just not as much to get into; it's always going to be harder to get the same level of horrified fascination/condescending laughter out of dissing Nasser's literary output as it is Mein Kampf. Occasional exceptions surface, such as Gaddafi's batshit Green Book, whose bathetic musings somehow prefigure everything from the revolutionary optimism of certain chums, to (in the passage on gender relations) the more loopily essentialist end of TERF rhetoric. And it does end with the infamously loopy oeuvre of Turkmenbashi, who combines the Soviet and religious strains of what has gone before with a devoted egotism to rival the Kims. But even in its more rote entries, again and again it brings home Kalder's key findings: the repeated failure of the liberal and/or Western to take seriously what is written by dictators future or present, or even to applaud what is manifestly not there out of some posturing radicalism (Sartre and Foucault appear more than once as particularly useful and idiotic useful idiots). And more than that, the degree to which dictator literature represents at once the corruption and the purest expression of the writer's desire to change the world with words, write something truer than the truth: "Faith does not so much override reasn as enslave it and then exploit it to erect fantastical pyramids constructed out of sheer desire"

*Only figuratively, alas. It is a skill which has always eluded me, and in terms of things people can actually do, as against flight and eye lasers and complete physical indestructibility, probably the one by whose lack I am most pained.

[Jonathon McKenney · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don’t think this book knew what it wanted to be— the first part, with a chapter focusing each on Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, and Mao was exhaustive and combined biography with a study of their bibliography. But then the back half was just a snarky, at terms kind of spicy, run through other dictators. It was interesting at times, and I will always be grateful for learning from him that Saddam wrote historical romances, but it felt far less focused. It felt like he was just writing this because no one had yet, but little to no interesting conclusions were drawn, it was just a collection of anecdotes and “lol isn’t this book terrible” Fine read, but the snarky tone sometimes was grating.

[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Solidly meh. I enjoyed learning about the lesser known “classics” of this genre (Saddam Hussein’s historical romance novels, anyone?), but the more well-known Soviet Union works bored me to tears (as I’m sure they did their original readers as well). And oh my goodness, the author loves the words “vituperate,” “homunculus,” and “millenarian.”

I received a digital ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

[Thomas · Rating 1 out of 5]

'Dictator Literature' kept reminding me of a study with a research question in need of reframing or abandonment. Malden wants to draw broad conclusions and parallels where a narrow focus would have helped him writing a coherent book. Instead he rambles through historical and biographical events that at times is entertaining but ultimately is not very informative. Using books as a research and narrative frame undermined his own ability to write an interesting or useful book.

[Liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

****This book was provided to me for free through NetGalley, but the review is all my own****

Do you enjoy reading non-fiction that makes you feel like a smarty pants while also making it very clear that you are nowhere near as educated on certain subjects as you thought you were? Are you also a smart ass? Then welcome to the Infernal Library. Grab your card and vocabulary study list from the desk, and buckle up for a densely written but satisfying trip through the many faces of the written word as produced by history’s own Legion of Doom.

In order to successfully make it through this book, you need to learn the following hundred dollar words, because they come up constantly throughout: millenarian, hagiography, phantasmagoria, homunculus, dialectic (actually look it up, though, don’t count on the half-baked understanding that got you through college). Getting the e-book where you can look up definitions on the fly is strongly encouraged.

The good news is that the author, Daniel Kalder, is good company as he takes us through this series of autocratic word crimes. This book could have been a series of self contained essays about individual horrible people and their collected works, but Kalder — poor guy — knows so much about this subject that he turns the whole book into a well structured learning experience about some of history’s worst people. It’s one thing to get the reader to understand just how out much of a hypocritical loon Lenin was, but Kalder manages to give the reader enough context over the course of his chapters about the Soviet era strongmen that you get the whole glorious picture of the USSR as what would happen if you gave a group of tenure track political science professors some guns, word processors, and a shitload of PCP. If you’re already filling in this space with your own "publish or perish" metaphor, this book’s for you.

But it’s not all heavy, unified theories of Marxist-Leninist book worship. We also learn all about the times when Saddam Hussein bared his soul to the masses through the magic of fiction before the whole being-pulled-out-of-a-hole-and-hanged thing. We find that, despite seeming to believe that reading was for sissies, Mussolini wrote a pulpy serialized novel to make some quick cash. The last chapter covers the most cartoonish, over-the-top local strongman to ever work in Central Asia and his infomercial ready dream journal/manifesto. These guys suck, and Kalder’s right there with you pointing and laughing.

That all said, this is a book that’s best to tackle in doses. It’s dense, heavy on the historical context, and the academic writing style takes longer to digest than regular prose. But if you stick with it, you’ll learn a lot and have a new appreciation for just how absurd the combination of narcissism and mediocrity that fuels the engines of these shitty, shitty historical relics

[Veronika Pizano · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tešila som sa na túto knihu, napokon to bolo veľké sklamanie a keďže som chcela knihu dočítať, musela som sa do toho nútiť. Hodnota knihy je skôr v historických súvislostiach, ale samotné hodnotenie kníh najväčších zločincov všetkých čias je nudné, občasne vysmievačné a povýšenecké.

[S.L. Myers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really good. People always say reading makes you a better person...not always.

[Nataša · Rating 4 out of 5]

3,5*
Ako som už spomínala, prvá polovica bola skvelá a vážne som si čítanie užívala, ale tá druhá... Skrátka autor miestami strácal šťavu, nebavilo to mňa a mám pocit, že ani jeho. Ale aj napriek tomu to všetko bolo poučné a aj miestami zábavné.

[Kratika · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘Dictator Literature’ is an illuminating and hilarious exploration of the literary works of some of the worst tyrants in history.
It explored the role of literature in shaping & sustaining totalitarian regimes and how pseudo-intellectualism is often used to impose dystopian visions.

Lenin may not have made sense always, but what he lacked in coherence, he made up for in verbosity. When his rivals disagreed with him, he put out turgid essays out attacking everything about them. It really made me laugh because even now in the 21st century self-important men try to win arguments with strangers (often women) in chat comments just be writing paragraphs and paragraphs of utter crap. A thesaurus word search & 4000-word count doth not a logical argument make.

The book is full of other witty and sarcastic comments on the dictator literature, and you really get to see the breadth of the awful literature put out - the pseudo-scientific & pompous (Lenin, Stalin, Brezhnev) to the bizarre & ridiculous (Mussolini’s romance novel, Mao’s poetry, Gaddafi's Green Book).
I can see the relevance of understanding dictator literature even today, where Hindutva in India is being supported by ancient Vedic texts and a little religious book is used across several extremist countries to subdue women. These are not dictator texts and may have their salient points, but at the end of the day their fanbase aims to exploit the same aura of reverence around books to hide their agendas in plain sight.

The book also made me rethink my own approach to intellect. I realized that I have always assumed that I need to read 'Das Kapital' or 'Mein Kampf' to expand my intellectual horizons.

I now think it is more important to understand how the lack of critical thinking and questioning can lead to the rise of tyranny in any country and grow your critical thinking by engaging with absurd texts.

This book is a timely and relevant reminder of the dangers of dictator literature, especially in the 21st century, when we have new means of spreading fake information and propaganda.

Couple of other quick points:
1. Loved how this is a snappy read. He doesn't get into excessive details about the works, and always shares relevant historical context for each of the countries.
2. The shorter sections on other dictators like Gaddafi, Turkmenbashi, Saddam Hussein made the book feel complete but were a little harder to get through. But perhaps I as a reader was spoiled by the thoroughly hilarious longer sections on Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Hitler and Mussolini.
3. I also appreciated how I got a quick summary of historical events - Great leap forward, Black day, etc.

Some Hilarious excerpts:
1. Perhaps the most remarkable instance of Mao's invasion of language comes from the Chinese literary critic Huang Ziping who recalls a friend's attempt to inveigle his way into a female comrade's affections exclusively through the use of Mao quotations, resulting in this
exceedingly stiff " found poem':
1. Hailing from the five lakes and the four seas, for a common revolutionary aim, we come together.
2. We must share information.
3. We must first have a firm grasp, and secondly be attentive to politics.

2. Marx nevertheless insisted that his outline of history was "scientific," and thus flattered his readers into thinking they were
members of an elite that had somehow gained access to a modern yet still absolute truth, providing the answer to the riddle of human existence.

3. Or perhaps Hitler was still bitter about his miserable childhood experiences in the classroom--a conclusion that becomes difficult to resist once he starts bleating that the youthful brain should in general not be burdened with things ninety-five percent of which it cannot use and hence forgets again." Continuing under the almost unbearably poignant heading "NO OVERLOADING OF THE BRAIN," Hitler calls for shortening of the curriculum.

[Jess (bookwyrmbella) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have always been fascinated by history and why people did the things they did. This book was about some of the famous dictators we have all heard of and the books they have had published with their ideology. While the author did a lot of research and explained the different dictator's era's very well, the actually reading came off very dry. Some of the details and references are too in depth for the casual reader. I saw a glimpse of how amusing the author can write based on the introduction of the book but I think the research got in the way of his natural writing. This is the kind of book that would be best suited for someone who is doing research for a school project on a specific dictator mentioned in this book.

*Received eARC via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Who'da thunk that anything interesting to read could be derived from dictator literature. Well I did, although I'm glad I could read about it rather than the works themselves. Thank you, Kalder, for having the courage to plow through mountains of drivel to summarize for me (and for all other curious readers). Findings: Mostly the tyrants (Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Mao, Khomeini, Castro, etc.) produced logarrhea (yes, I had to look up that word), but here and there were some surprises. Mussolini, for example, was an intellectually curious writer and most articulate of the lot. Stalin, not much of a writer but "a line editor from hell." Hitler's Mein Kampf is 400 pages of dictated gibberish. Mao's quotations are disjointed and banal, destined, following his death, for the land fill. Khomeini's works: lucid and sensible even though alien. I like Kalder's asides, written in the first-person, about his struggles with researching, reading and writing mostly unreadable dross, a dictatorial prose travelogue. He sees the themes of his book all around us today. "This is the story of how it all went down the first time around."

[Annie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dictator literature. It's a genre. Who knew?

Makes sense. Dictators love to hear themselves talk. They write philosophy, religious manifestos, poetry, memoirs, or even romance novels (sigh). Once upon a time, their captive audiences bought up their books, but today they're rarely read (in part, because what they write is, as the author accurately puts it, "mind numbing drivel"). Who has really read Mao Zedong's "Quotations From Mao Zedong," Hitler's "Mein Kampf," Saddam Hussein's romance novel "Zabibah and the King," or Saparmurat Niyazov's "Ruhnama"?

Fun fact: Hitler once worked for the military in an amusingly ironic role-- his job was to monitor extremist, racist, political groups. Lol. As anthropologists say, he "went native" with one of those groups, which happened to be Anton Drexler's anti-Semitic group, later becoming the Nazi Party. We are what we pretend to be, so be careful what you pretend to be.

Anyway, this book has two major points: dictator lit is incredibly stupid, boring, and incoherent, but don't let that lull you into complacency. Their literature is a weapon more powerful than their military.

"This is the danger of dictator books. They hide in plain sight, and their sheer awfulness makes it impossible to believe in their power to infiltrate and transform brains until it is much too late."

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was looking forward to reading this book, which has a fascinating premise, but ended up disappointed. The snarky tone obliterates objective analysis far too often. Whilst the superficial analysis of Castro goes no further than calling him a "flaccid penis", Portugal's Salazar is almost lauded for his background in economics, whilst Stalin is mocked as an autodidact from the provinces. Establishment dictators get an easier ride than any self-educated man, unless they are middle class left-wingers like Lenin or Mao, whose background is repeatedly brought up as it clearly makes them unsuitable revolutionaries. The chapter on Ayatollah Khomeini shows what the book could have been if it just dropped the childish mocking and stuck to analysis, but I suspect I can guess the reason why this figure was treated in a more adult manner than some of the others.

Clearly an impressive amount of work has gone into this, and there is the bones of a good book in there, but the personal and the political overlap to an infuriating degree making this a unsatisfactory read.

[Martin Posch · Rating 2 out of 5]

Čítanie tejto knihy je ako jazda na húsenkovej dráhe - s tým že sa väčšinu trasy nachádzate dole (podpriemerom) a občas vás nová informácia vystrelí do zaujímavých priestorov. Veľmi rýchlo vás však dole stiahne autor a jeho silená snaha byť vtipný. Bohužiaľ autor neanalyzuje knihy diktátorov iba ich popisuje ( niekedy len názvy a komentár prečo ich nečitať). Kniha vznikla pri písaní blogu a kvalitatívne ním aj zostala. Škoda, tešil som sa na ňu.

[Joe Zivak · Rating 3 out of 5]

Intelektualna oddychovka. Je jasne, ze pri tomto rozsahu tem nie je sanca, ze autor je expert na kazdu. Horsie je, ze nie je expert na ziadnu. Napriek tomu sa da povedat, ze je to sarkaticke, vtipne a clovek sa vdaka mnozstvu tem aj nieco nove dozvie. Zaver je neskutocne apaticky a naznacuje, ze pokial nezomreli miliony ludi, tak sa nema zmysel rozculovat nad politikou. To je strasna hlupost, ale necudujem sa, ze jej kadekto podlieha. Znie to mudro a ucene.

[Meg · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an extraordinary book. I picked this up on a whim (I mean look at that cover!) and boy was it a treat to read. Intensely fascinating and in parts very funny indeed. Truly an eye opening insight into some of the worst figures of the 20th and 21st centuries. I have recommended it to everyone!