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Victory-in-Defeat, Defeat-in-Victory #2
Gücümüzün Doğuşu
Victor Serge’in Gücümüzün Doğuşu adlı epik romanı esas olarak İspanya ve Rusya’da; 1917-1919 yıllarının çalkantılı devrimci ayaklanma yıllarında geçmektedir. Serge’in muntazam anlatısı tarihsel bir dönüm noktası olarak Birinci Dünya Savaşı’nın hendeklerinde gerçekleştirilen kanlı kitle kıyımlarının üçüncü yılıyla; yani 1917 yılı ile açılır. 1917 baharı aynı zamanda Rusya ve İspanya’da birdenbire ortaya çıkan devrimci kabarmalar dönemidir de. Her ne kadar İspanya’daki ayaklanma fiyaskoyla sonuçlanmış olsa da, Rusya’da işçiler, köylüler ve askerlerin oluşturduğu devrimci örgütlülük iktidarı ele geçirebilmiştir.
Victor Serge’in resmettiği “iki şehrin hikâyesi” devrimcilerin iktidarı almakta başarısız oldukları Barcelona ile karşı-devrimci Beyaz Ordu tarafından kuşatılmış, açlıktan kıralan, türlü sorunlarla boğuşan, Rus Devrimi’nin başkenti olan Petrograd arasındaki tezatlık üzerine kurulmuştur.
Yazarının Stalin’in devrimi boğmaya varan diktatörlük uygulamalarına açıkça karşı çıktığı için yarı-tutuklu bulunduğu bir dönemde, Leningrad’ta kaleme aldığı bu romanda birbirleriyle bağlantılı iki tablo ustaca sunulur: Bir yanda bol güneşli İspanyol başkentindeki radikalleşmiş işçilerin kendi iktidarlarını kurmak üzere kalkıştıkları devrimci eylemlerin “romantik” tablosu; diğer yanda ise Rusya’nın soğuk ve karanlık devrimci süreçlerinin anlatıldığı katı ve acımasız bir “gerçekçi” tablo vardır..
Victor Serge’in resmettiği “iki şehrin hikâyesi” devrimcilerin iktidarı almakta başarısız oldukları Barcelona ile karşı-devrimci Beyaz Ordu tarafından kuşatılmış, açlıktan kıralan, türlü sorunlarla boğuşan, Rus Devrimi’nin başkenti olan Petrograd arasındaki tezatlık üzerine kurulmuştur.
Yazarının Stalin’in devrimi boğmaya varan diktatörlük uygulamalarına açıkça karşı çıktığı için yarı-tutuklu bulunduğu bir dönemde, Leningrad’ta kaleme aldığı bu romanda birbirleriyle bağlantılı iki tablo ustaca sunulur: Bir yanda bol güneşli İspanyol başkentindeki radikalleşmiş işçilerin kendi iktidarlarını kurmak üzere kalkıştıkları devrimci eylemlerin “romantik” tablosu; diğer yanda ise Rusya’nın soğuk ve karanlık devrimci süreçlerinin anlatıldığı katı ve acımasız bir “gerçekçi” tablo vardır..
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1931
19 people are currently reading
433 people want to read
About the author
Victor Serge
102 books228 followersVictor Lvovich Kibalchich (В.Л. Кибальчич) was born in exile in 1890 and died in exile in 1947. He is better known as Victor Serge, a Russian revolutionary and Francophone writer. Originally an anarchist, he joined the Bolsheviks five months after arriving in Petrograd in January 1919, and later worked for the newly founded Comintern as a journalist, editor and translator. He was openly critical of the Soviet regime, but remained loyal to the ideals of socialism until his death.
After time spent in France, Belgium, Russia and Spain, Serge was forced to live out the rest of his life in Mexico, with no country he could call home. Serge's health had been badly damaged by his periods of imprisonment in France and Russia, but he continued to write until he died of heart attack, in Mexico city on 17 November 1947. Having no nationality, no Mexican cemetery could legally take his body, so he was buried as a 'Spanish Republican.'
After time spent in France, Belgium, Russia and Spain, Serge was forced to live out the rest of his life in Mexico, with no country he could call home. Serge's health had been badly damaged by his periods of imprisonment in France and Russia, but he continued to write until he died of heart attack, in Mexico city on 17 November 1947. Having no nationality, no Mexican cemetery could legally take his body, so he was buried as a 'Spanish Republican.'
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
May 3, 2015
Part two of Serge's 'defeat in victory, victory in defeat' semi-autobiographical trilogy of novels, each book essentially chronicling his time in Europe during the First World War, being incarcerated (which is what Men in Prison dealt with - see my review) in France and then, on release, traveling to Barcelona whilst that City is in the throes of its own social unrest during 1917. For the first half of the novel we are introduced, via Serge's amazing method of descriptive characterisation, to each of the most important figures involved during a period that probably was an eventual precursor to the Spanish Civil War of the mid 1930's; Spain had a long history of oppression and inequality that saw it on occasion ferment into civil unrest, strikes and disorder. What gives Serge and the wide mix of characters some sort of hope however is the Russian Revolution which occurs, or at least starts during his time in Barcelona, and even though the uprising he becomes involved in is suppressed, he still maintains hope to what was happening at this time in St.Petersburg.
And this is what guides Serge in his semi-autobiographical tale; a form of revolutionary êlan, like a light shining a beacon over the ravaged wasteland of war-torn Europe - symbolically and poetically described. When he leaves Spain to try and make his way to Russia, being incarcerated in a Prisoner of War camp in France for being a 'politico' does not diminish his 'hope', that a true workers revolution was occurring (as well as a feeling of his despair of the news reports his group in the camp were reading, creating a sense of impotence that world events were passing them by). What this novel also does, apart from the obvious politics, is describe what a war-torn continent looked like; an amazing slice and literal portrayal of history, including describing all the different nationalities churned up in this cataclysmic conflict, most notibaly in the POW camp; the comradeship and collective suffering (well, if you had the money there was a black market..) and so on. Serge knew incarceration all too well, and privation was never a new experience for him (probably just testing his mettal for supporting Trotsky later on).
The eventual armistice arrives, there is hope what is happening in Germany (the mutinies et al), and Serge and several of his band from the POW camp are eventually exchanged as hostages for ex-Tsarist high ranking Generals from the new Soviet State. There is now hope; a new hope as they are leaving a devastated Europe and heading towards a beacon, a light in the darkness, a radiant egalitarian society being formed from the ashes of the old world. Or so Serge and his comrades wanted to believe. The reality is described clearly; instead of a city in the grip of fervor, the opposite is the case; starvation, lack of heating, the old tsarist buildings having their floorboards ripped up for kindle etc. A city in ruins. Not only this, but there is a fledgling bureaucracy being built up. Serge and his friends spend hours trying to find somewhere to stay and keep being pushed around to different 'departments'. The Cheka (the early Bolshevik secret police) are here too, who take away one of Serges' friends he had met when in Barcelona, whom then subsequently deliver a pistol shot into the back of his head for being in the pay of the 'enemy'. The seeds of later totalitarianism and dictatorship had already started to sprout, all painted too clearly. This is 'defeat in victory', whilst the energy and hope expressed in Barcelona during their uprising and subsequent suppression, is 'victory in defeat'.
And this is what guides Serge in his semi-autobiographical tale; a form of revolutionary êlan, like a light shining a beacon over the ravaged wasteland of war-torn Europe - symbolically and poetically described. When he leaves Spain to try and make his way to Russia, being incarcerated in a Prisoner of War camp in France for being a 'politico' does not diminish his 'hope', that a true workers revolution was occurring (as well as a feeling of his despair of the news reports his group in the camp were reading, creating a sense of impotence that world events were passing them by). What this novel also does, apart from the obvious politics, is describe what a war-torn continent looked like; an amazing slice and literal portrayal of history, including describing all the different nationalities churned up in this cataclysmic conflict, most notibaly in the POW camp; the comradeship and collective suffering (well, if you had the money there was a black market..) and so on. Serge knew incarceration all too well, and privation was never a new experience for him (probably just testing his mettal for supporting Trotsky later on).
The eventual armistice arrives, there is hope what is happening in Germany (the mutinies et al), and Serge and several of his band from the POW camp are eventually exchanged as hostages for ex-Tsarist high ranking Generals from the new Soviet State. There is now hope; a new hope as they are leaving a devastated Europe and heading towards a beacon, a light in the darkness, a radiant egalitarian society being formed from the ashes of the old world. Or so Serge and his comrades wanted to believe. The reality is described clearly; instead of a city in the grip of fervor, the opposite is the case; starvation, lack of heating, the old tsarist buildings having their floorboards ripped up for kindle etc. A city in ruins. Not only this, but there is a fledgling bureaucracy being built up. Serge and his friends spend hours trying to find somewhere to stay and keep being pushed around to different 'departments'. The Cheka (the early Bolshevik secret police) are here too, who take away one of Serges' friends he had met when in Barcelona, whom then subsequently deliver a pistol shot into the back of his head for being in the pay of the 'enemy'. The seeds of later totalitarianism and dictatorship had already started to sprout, all painted too clearly. This is 'defeat in victory', whilst the energy and hope expressed in Barcelona during their uprising and subsequent suppression, is 'victory in defeat'.
May 12, 2019
Barselona ve Leningrad, birinde başarısız olan devrim, diğerinde zaferle sonuçlanıyor, ama yeterli mi?
"Kendi zaferimiz tarafından zapt olunma, mücadele ettiğimiz kötülükleri kendimiz yapma riskiyle karşı karşıya değil miydik?"
"Olaylar asla insanın onları düşlediği gibi olmazlar. Düşlerle ya da kuramlarla sınırlanmamalıyız. Ama o zaman rehber olarak ne kalıyor ki?"
"Yaşama sanatı düşünmekten oluşur. Çok az güzel an vardır. O da elinde bir kitap, çimenlerin üstüne uzanabildiğin anlardır..."
"Bizim eski labirentlerimizin arasında yolunuzu bulmanız için anlayışlı ve açık fikirli olmak yeterli değildir; yanılgıya, hilekarlığa, hayale, geçmişe, arzuya, başka insanlara ve kendinize alışık olmak gerekir. Kimseye güvenmemeli, kendinizi eleştirisel yöntemle, kuşkuyla ve güvenle silahlandırmalı, sözcüklere karşı ihtiyatlı davranmalı, onları, yere değdiklerinde, değersiz, suni tükürüğe dönen o enfes sabun köpükleri gibi saçmayı öğrenmelisiniz."
Hayatı mücadele içinde geçen isyancı bir yazarın deneyimlerden çıkardığı ve damıttığı romanı.
"Kendi zaferimiz tarafından zapt olunma, mücadele ettiğimiz kötülükleri kendimiz yapma riskiyle karşı karşıya değil miydik?"
"Olaylar asla insanın onları düşlediği gibi olmazlar. Düşlerle ya da kuramlarla sınırlanmamalıyız. Ama o zaman rehber olarak ne kalıyor ki?"
"Yaşama sanatı düşünmekten oluşur. Çok az güzel an vardır. O da elinde bir kitap, çimenlerin üstüne uzanabildiğin anlardır..."
"Bizim eski labirentlerimizin arasında yolunuzu bulmanız için anlayışlı ve açık fikirli olmak yeterli değildir; yanılgıya, hilekarlığa, hayale, geçmişe, arzuya, başka insanlara ve kendinize alışık olmak gerekir. Kimseye güvenmemeli, kendinizi eleştirisel yöntemle, kuşkuyla ve güvenle silahlandırmalı, sözcüklere karşı ihtiyatlı davranmalı, onları, yere değdiklerinde, değersiz, suni tükürüğe dönen o enfes sabun köpükleri gibi saçmayı öğrenmelisiniz."
Hayatı mücadele içinde geçen isyancı bir yazarın deneyimlerden çıkardığı ve damıttığı romanı.
February 6, 2017
Highly appropriate to have read this in the opening days of 2017, just ahead of all the opportunities there will be from February onwards to mark the centenary of the revolutionary events that shook Europe across it length and breadth in 1917.
It is hard to know whether this book counts as a novel or autobiography. In favour of the former is that fact that it has sections which are imaginative constructions of events – conversations between police chiefs, the deaths of men in typhus wards amongst others – in which the narrative claims no first-hand place for the author. But for the latter the text is imbued with Serge’s personal experiences as a participant in the failed attempt at an insurrection in Barcelona, his months in a concentration camp in France, and his transportation by ship to Petrograd when he was eventually able to join the defence of the city on 1919.
It feels like an account of his life but for the fact that the pronoun ‘I’ is subordinate to the point of virtual invisibility in the swirl of events that sees men (invariably men) intriguing, fighting, suffering and dying, and finally arriving. The books celebrates the endurance and resistance of a proletariat which capitalism as reduced to a state of native exploitation in factories and workshops, poverty when on the streets, and cannon-fodder on the battlefields. The influence of anarchism amongst this group is notable – from the egoism of Stirner to the collectivism of Bakunin – is celebrated as part of the desire of the working class for genuine freedom as well as an end to subordination to the ruthless economic logic of capitalism.
Also there is the sense that all of this takes place within the definite special location of the City – unnamed in the text whether the place for the action is Barcelona or Petrograd, and because of that taking the form of a spiritual communion between the people in revolt and the place where they live. The opening paragraphs describe the deep ambiguity of this relationship – a place that would be loved, where it not also a place where men are held in subjugation by police forces and prisons.
Richard Greeman’s excellent introduction to this edition also draws out another great theme in Serge’s work. The sense he conveys that the working class can experience defeat both in their failure to seize power, but also, as in the case of Soviet Russia, by their success in forging a new state power. Some might conclude from this that all action is futile: for Serge it appears to be an invocation to do better next time.
It is hard to know whether this book counts as a novel or autobiography. In favour of the former is that fact that it has sections which are imaginative constructions of events – conversations between police chiefs, the deaths of men in typhus wards amongst others – in which the narrative claims no first-hand place for the author. But for the latter the text is imbued with Serge’s personal experiences as a participant in the failed attempt at an insurrection in Barcelona, his months in a concentration camp in France, and his transportation by ship to Petrograd when he was eventually able to join the defence of the city on 1919.
It feels like an account of his life but for the fact that the pronoun ‘I’ is subordinate to the point of virtual invisibility in the swirl of events that sees men (invariably men) intriguing, fighting, suffering and dying, and finally arriving. The books celebrates the endurance and resistance of a proletariat which capitalism as reduced to a state of native exploitation in factories and workshops, poverty when on the streets, and cannon-fodder on the battlefields. The influence of anarchism amongst this group is notable – from the egoism of Stirner to the collectivism of Bakunin – is celebrated as part of the desire of the working class for genuine freedom as well as an end to subordination to the ruthless economic logic of capitalism.
Also there is the sense that all of this takes place within the definite special location of the City – unnamed in the text whether the place for the action is Barcelona or Petrograd, and because of that taking the form of a spiritual communion between the people in revolt and the place where they live. The opening paragraphs describe the deep ambiguity of this relationship – a place that would be loved, where it not also a place where men are held in subjugation by police forces and prisons.
Richard Greeman’s excellent introduction to this edition also draws out another great theme in Serge’s work. The sense he conveys that the working class can experience defeat both in their failure to seize power, but also, as in the case of Soviet Russia, by their success in forging a new state power. Some might conclude from this that all action is futile: for Serge it appears to be an invocation to do better next time.
July 3, 2024
L’he acabat de llegir amb el Red Army Choir a tot volum. Desprèn aquesta sensibilitat que tenien els revolucionaris quan la revolució era possible. En Serge era un heterodox disciplinat, un romàntic realista, un optimista de la voluntat amb dubte metòdic. Uno di noi. No m’estranya que acabés a un gulag i deportat.
“Era el moment de la darrera crida, feta amb paraules simbòliques, immenses i vagues, que ho contenien tot: “Solidaritat, justícia, república, treball, futur”. En Salvador se submergia llavors entre la multitud que l’abraçava, el besava, li feia preguntes, hi debatia. Un gegant despitralat li va murmurar a l’orella, amb un alè d’all i de vi: “Ens falten vint brownings”.
“Era el moment de la darrera crida, feta amb paraules simbòliques, immenses i vagues, que ho contenien tot: “Solidaritat, justícia, república, treball, futur”. En Salvador se submergia llavors entre la multitud que l’abraçava, el besava, li feia preguntes, hi debatia. Un gegant despitralat li va murmurar a l’orella, amb un alè d’all i de vi: “Ens falten vint brownings”.
October 9, 2015
Another excellent read from Serge. The man was a superb craftsman. Love it.
February 13, 2024
4.5 stars. His "The Case Of Comrade Tulayev" is better, but this comes close.
Victor Serge (a pseudonym) was born in Belgium to Russian parents who were exiles from Tsarist Russia. He was immersed in revolutionary talk and ideas from childhood and became an activist himself, managing to survive both the revolutionary upheavals of the early 20th century and the advent of Stalin. He was initially an anarchist, later converting to Marxism and becoming an adherent of the Left Opposition in Russia and friend of Trotsky and Zinoviev.
This novel is a fictionalised memoir of his involvement in the general strike and abortive revolution in Barcelona in 1917, followed by escape across the French border and an attempt to reach Revolutionary Russia via the Russian Expeditionary Force on the Western Front. He is arrested as an undesirable alien and interned in a concentration camp before being exchanged after the Armistice with Western prisoners held by the new regime in Russia. The novel ends with the unnamed narrator starting to find his feet in St Petersburg and joyfully keeping warm by burning volumes of the Penal Code of the Tsarist Russian Empire. Exciting times !
The experiences of being an oppressed worker, an illegal agitator and a fugitive from the "justice" of reactionary regimes is vividly recounted, as are the comradeship and idealism which sustains him. The prison memoir is reminiscent of EE Cummings' "The Enormous Room" - except that he does not share Cummings' naive belief in the innocence of his fellow-inmates, or his confidence that everything will be OK in the end (Cummings was the son of Harvard intellectuals who were able to obtain US diplomatic pressure to achieve his release).
The novel sometimes seems a little disjointed and episodic, explained in the Introduction and Afterword as a consequence of its history - Serge was out of official favour by the time he wrote all his books, and had no expectation that they would ever be published in Russia. So he wrote short sections which were individually smuggled out and never edited as a whole. Stylistic deficiencies forgiven !
Some memorable passages I found moving:
{on the transitory hope of change engendered by The Great War} "And what if the circle of absurdity were not broken ? If after this war, these millions of dead, this disembowelled Europe, we were once again to know the peace of times past with the old multicoloured flags flying over the bone heaps ?";
{a famous matador's performance briefly distracts the workers from thoughts of revolution} "The thin sword held in the hand of this ex-cowherd from Andalusia seemed to be parrying the death blow aimed at the monarchy.";
{a right-wing newspaper article implies that Lenin is a German stooge} "What is the point of being incorruptible if you don't take money ?";
{soldiers' views of the Home Front in Paris echo Siegfried Sassoon} "the old man in the rear who knows everything of life for having used it up"......."By means of a marvellous alchemy, 100,000 businessmen transform pain, courage, faith, blood, shit and death into streams of gold.......";
"Fugitives cast two shadows; their own and the stool pigeon's";
{Allied victory has its downside for the workers} "Therefore, no revolution. Order, triumph, trophies, parades, the survivors' pride guaranteeing that the sufferings and the death would be forgotten, apotheosis of the generals."
Victor Serge (a pseudonym) was born in Belgium to Russian parents who were exiles from Tsarist Russia. He was immersed in revolutionary talk and ideas from childhood and became an activist himself, managing to survive both the revolutionary upheavals of the early 20th century and the advent of Stalin. He was initially an anarchist, later converting to Marxism and becoming an adherent of the Left Opposition in Russia and friend of Trotsky and Zinoviev.
This novel is a fictionalised memoir of his involvement in the general strike and abortive revolution in Barcelona in 1917, followed by escape across the French border and an attempt to reach Revolutionary Russia via the Russian Expeditionary Force on the Western Front. He is arrested as an undesirable alien and interned in a concentration camp before being exchanged after the Armistice with Western prisoners held by the new regime in Russia. The novel ends with the unnamed narrator starting to find his feet in St Petersburg and joyfully keeping warm by burning volumes of the Penal Code of the Tsarist Russian Empire. Exciting times !
The experiences of being an oppressed worker, an illegal agitator and a fugitive from the "justice" of reactionary regimes is vividly recounted, as are the comradeship and idealism which sustains him. The prison memoir is reminiscent of EE Cummings' "The Enormous Room" - except that he does not share Cummings' naive belief in the innocence of his fellow-inmates, or his confidence that everything will be OK in the end (Cummings was the son of Harvard intellectuals who were able to obtain US diplomatic pressure to achieve his release).
The novel sometimes seems a little disjointed and episodic, explained in the Introduction and Afterword as a consequence of its history - Serge was out of official favour by the time he wrote all his books, and had no expectation that they would ever be published in Russia. So he wrote short sections which were individually smuggled out and never edited as a whole. Stylistic deficiencies forgiven !
Some memorable passages I found moving:
{on the transitory hope of change engendered by The Great War} "And what if the circle of absurdity were not broken ? If after this war, these millions of dead, this disembowelled Europe, we were once again to know the peace of times past with the old multicoloured flags flying over the bone heaps ?";
{a famous matador's performance briefly distracts the workers from thoughts of revolution} "The thin sword held in the hand of this ex-cowherd from Andalusia seemed to be parrying the death blow aimed at the monarchy.";
{a right-wing newspaper article implies that Lenin is a German stooge} "What is the point of being incorruptible if you don't take money ?";
{soldiers' views of the Home Front in Paris echo Siegfried Sassoon} "the old man in the rear who knows everything of life for having used it up"......."By means of a marvellous alchemy, 100,000 businessmen transform pain, courage, faith, blood, shit and death into streams of gold.......";
"Fugitives cast two shadows; their own and the stool pigeon's";
{Allied victory has its downside for the workers} "Therefore, no revolution. Order, triumph, trophies, parades, the survivors' pride guaranteeing that the sufferings and the death would be forgotten, apotheosis of the generals."
July 22, 2025
Excellent evocation of a revolutionary era and the political imaginary of the European revolutionary Left. Highly recommended for Serge's always-profound insights about how to be a revolutionary, and about what revolutions are - other than romances.
Similarly recommended reading for what it reveals to be the stark limitations of even the best European Communists of the era (and Serge was certainly among these). Readers will surely be as struck by Serge's proclivity for racist caricature as I was, and by the thorough masculinism of his writing and perspective. (Try and find a description of a woman here that doesn't revolve around her sexuality or reproductive labour).
Highly revealing, in ways both ugly and complimentary, as well as genuinely compelling as narrative and literature.
Similarly recommended reading for what it reveals to be the stark limitations of even the best European Communists of the era (and Serge was certainly among these). Readers will surely be as struck by Serge's proclivity for racist caricature as I was, and by the thorough masculinism of his writing and perspective. (Try and find a description of a woman here that doesn't revolve around her sexuality or reproductive labour).
Highly revealing, in ways both ugly and complimentary, as well as genuinely compelling as narrative and literature.
November 26, 2020
The book is a perfect example of Serge's ability to paint silhouettes of people, archetypes representing certain currents in a society in flux. Stylistically it is brilliant. Narratively it leaves a lot to be desired.
Although I enjoyed reading the book and I found it relaxing the story itself did not have enough to keep me hooked so I spent thong periods of time reading other things.
I'm glad I persevered to the end but I would not describe this book as being recommended to anyone other than those politically interested in Serge's life or those who are curious to understand his writing method.
Although I enjoyed reading the book and I found it relaxing the story itself did not have enough to keep me hooked so I spent thong periods of time reading other things.
I'm glad I persevered to the end but I would not describe this book as being recommended to anyone other than those politically interested in Serge's life or those who are curious to understand his writing method.
January 3, 2020
This tale of daring and desperate revolutionaries trying to take advantage of turbulent times is at once mesmerising, horrifying and inspiring. The book is sadly let down by its depictions of women and black (African and Haitian) characters. More accurately, these should be seen as depictions of the author's misogyny and racism, which may be a reflection of the times but no better for it. Nevertheless an important, interesting and I gather semi-autobiographical novel exploring some of the human dimension of the 20th century's rollercoaster of war and revolution.
May 15, 2023
Abandono aquest llibre. M'ha semblat un despropòsit. L'autor té una forma de redactar que fa no flueixi la lectura. Presenta un seguit d'escenes plenes de descripcions que no aporten res en un intent de semblar líric i que entorpeixen la lectura. També té una obsessió per les enumeracions que completen aquest despropòsit.
August 27, 2023
Llibre que està molt be per tenir consciència revoluciònaria i entendre com en un cert moment de la història s'estaven coent dues revolucions molt diferents als dos extrems d'Europa però tot i ser una crònica dels fets que va viure Victor Serge, enganxa poc
January 14, 2020
too episodic to be gripping despite beautiful prose. like anarchism in Barcelona, it was a lot of talk with no reward
July 25, 2022
A powerful, surging book about victory in defeat, and defeat in victory- and the dignity in both.
Really enjoyed reading this, it was very compelling and hard to put down.
Really enjoyed reading this, it was very compelling and hard to put down.
November 17, 2022
Najveća mana ovog romana je spajanje nespojivih narativnih formi.
November 29, 2025
struggled with the shifts between 3rd & 1st person narration; v.s. still the 🐐
January 16, 2025
“By means of a marvelous alchemy, one hundred thousand businessmen transform pain, courage, faith, blood, shit, and death into streams of gold…”
paused-abandoned
February 9, 2017Outside-view narration...I know it is an instrument, where the People (not individuals) are supposed to be the actors, but I seriously cannot immerse into it at all.
March 14, 2011
Writing is less episodic the Men In Prison but more obscure, verging on stream of consciousness.
January 25, 2016
A beautiful literary stream-of-consciousness exploration of revolutionary vigor and conquest.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews