مولع بفاجنر

by George Bernard Shaw, جورج برنارد شو, ثروت عكاشة (Translator)

Inteligente, exuberante e irresistivelmente divertido, o quinto e mais ambicioso romance de Shaw é uma sátira brilhante sobre o preconceito social.

Sidney Trefusis é um socialista desejoso de fazer prosélitos. Armado de ironia e paradoxo, está determinado a derrubar uma sociedade dominada pela exploração de classe e de género. Filho de um milionário, decide abdicar dos seus privilégios e da sua fortuna, para passar a viver como um simples camponês, abandonando, pelo caminho, a sua jovem esposa, que o ama. Mas quando este socialista antissocial vai trabalhar como jardineiro nas proximidades de uma escola de raparigas, encontra o seu par - pois Agatha Wylie é um novo tipo de mulher, perfeitamente armada. E ela não o ama.
Com o carácter de um palhaço-profeta, Trefusis espalha o caos nos meios em que se move, suscitando um misto de fascínio e de repulsa, e enredando todos os que com ele se cruzam em intrigas desastrosas que parecem não o afetar.
Em Um Socialista Associal, Bernard Shaw apresentou pela primeira vez a sua visão do que deveria ser a relação entre os sexos. A revolução que anunciava ainda está por fazer.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Politics, Philosophy, Nobel Prize, Plays, British Literature

282 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1887

About the author

George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright, socialist, and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama. Over the course of his life he wrote more than 60 plays. Nearly all his plays address prevailing social problems, but each also includes a vein of comedy that makes their stark themes more palatable. In these works Shaw examined education, marriage, religion, government, health care, and class privilege.

An ardent socialist, Shaw was angered by what he perceived to be the exploitation of the working class. He wrote many brochures and speeches for the Fabian Society. He became an accomplished orator in the furtherance of its causes, which included gaining equal rights for men and women, alleviating abuses of the working class, rescinding private ownership of productive land, and promoting healthy lifestyles. For a short time he was active in local politics, serving on the London County Council.

In 1898, Shaw married Charlotte Payne-Townshend, a fellow Fabian, whom he survived. They settled in Ayot St. Lawrence in a house now called Shaw's Corner.

He is the only person to have been awarded both a Nobel Prize for Literature (1925) and an Oscar (1938). The former for his contributions to literature and the latter for his work on the film "Pygmalion" (adaptation of his play of the same name). Shaw wanted to refuse his Nobel Prize outright, as he had no desire for public honours, but he accepted it at his wife's behest. She considered it a tribute to Ireland. He did reject the monetary award, requesting it be used to finance translation of Swedish books to English.

Shaw died at Shaw's Corner, aged 94, from chronic health problems exacerbated by injuries incurred by falling.

Reviews

[DeAnne · Rating 4 out of 5]

George Bernard Shaw was a master of the satire, and he used his pen as a knife to cut through the bejeweled ribbons of a class structure that he found to be both unsustainable and at the pinnacle of it's success.

In this work, he elucidates the concepts of socialism far better than any of the actual proponents of the philosophy did, and yet also showed the relative difficulties in ridding society of the evils of rampant capitalism.

I find it striking, that a hundred years after this story was written, that the barons of capitalism have still not changed their course, and the poor are still slaves to a system they have no chance to escape.

The discussions of economic systems in the book are enrobed in a light tale of Regency-style romance, which is not uncommon in Shaw's work...it was how the books were able to be published.

I believe this to be one of Shaw's finest satires, and I recommend it highly.

[imane · Rating 5 out of 5]

ربما لو قرات هذا الكتاب في الماضي ما كنت لافهمه. هناك كتب عندما يحين وقت قراءتها هي من تناديك كان الكتب تمتلك ارواحا تجذبك اليها اذا كانت روحك ستتوافق مع روحها وتنفرك منها اذا لم تكن جاهزا بعد لاكتشافها. وموسيقى فاغنر من اجمل ما سمعت من اين جاء بكل ذلك الجمال. اوبرا خاتم النيبولينج (شكل من اشكال المسرح يعرض بالموسيقى والغناء) عبارة عن ملحمة حياة (شر خير كره حب فقر غنى جمال قبح الهة شياطين سماء ارض رجل امراة ظالم مظلوم ذئاب خرفان استبداد ثورة نور ظلام حياة موت.
...)

[مريم عكاشة · Rating 4 out of 5]

لم يكن الكتابُ ممتعاً من حيثُ اللغة الراقية التي استخدمها شو في الكتابة أو الدكتور ثروت عُكاشة في الترجمة, كذلك لم تَكمن متعة الكتاب في تَصفُح آراء شو و ربطِه بينَ شخصيات مسرحيات فاجنر الخيالية و الواقع, بل مُتعتي المُفضلة التي خرجت بها من قراءة مولَع بفاجنر, كانت الفرصة لرؤية الموسيقى التي لمست قلبي برقةٍ و هزَّته بقوة في الآن نفسه مكتوبةً و تحوي كُلَّ تلك المُتع !

[Andrea · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oh, my sweet Fabian Jesus, was Shaw ever unbearable when he wrote this! It is from his early(ish) years (1884), I grant him, and in his preface he draws a line between himself as young novel writer and the older playwright and man of political experience. I try not to confuse authors with characters, especially whey they are attempting a vaguely humourous novel. Trefusis may well be something of a caricature. Still, the heavily expository nature of this novel seems to indicate that in the main these are essentially Shaw's views on Socialism, the position of wealth, the workings of class and most abysmally, the nature of women.

I hate it when wit, satire and misogyny get confused.

Trefusis has more public school arrogance than what he mocks in others, a great desire to constantly hear his own voice, and the emotional reach of a twig. Small wonder the Fabians didn't get far with the working classes. That said, he was right (and occasionally witty) on a number of points.

At Cambridge they taught me that his profits were the reward of abstinence...Then came the question: what did my father abstain from? The workmen abstained from meat, drink, fresh air, good clothes, decent lodging, holidays, money, the society of their families and pretty nearly everything that makes life worth living, which was perhaps the reason why they usually died twenty years or so sooner than people in my circumstances. Yet no one rewarded them for their abstinence. The reward came to my father, who abstained from none of these things, but indulged in them all to his heart's content (94).

Pages 272-273 contain as good an account of globalisation and the move of industry to countries of cheaper labour as any written today, though he believed the workers would follow the jobs. He writes:

As the British factories are shut up, they will be replaced by villas; the manufacturing districts will become fashionable resorts for capitalists living on the interest of foreign investments... (273)

It did take a while for this to happen, but I got a little chill reading that.

On the other hand, had I written down every grating insult to women phrased as wit contained in these pages, this post would have been as long as the book. I don't know why these two in particular called me to mark them as I feel sure there was worse, but still:

But we Socialists need to study the romantic side of our movement to interest women in it. If you want to make a cause grow, instruct every woman you meet in it. She is or will one day be a wife, and will contradict her husband with scraps of your arguments. A squabble will follow. The son will listen, and will be set thinking if he be capable of thought. And so the mind of the people gets leavened. I have converted many young women. Most of them know no more of the economic theory of Socialism than they know of Chaldee; but they no longer fear or condemn its name (283).

On reflection, the quote below might just have been the most infuriating. I hadn't wanted to punch an author in the stomach this much since reading Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, but that feeling started up from the very beginning when he abandons his wife and commences flirting with several 17-year old school girls.

Yes; you sometimes have to answer a woman according to her womanishness, just as you have to answer a fool according to his folly (333).

Socialist women certainly had their work cut out for them in fighting for respect, a place and a voice in this movement. It makes the efforts of those like Maud Pember Reeves and the Fabian women's group all the more impressive, and I now blame Shaw and his ilk entirely for their steadfast seriousness and abandonment of any kind of 'femininity' as they battled to overturn the image of flighty, emotional society women incapable of serious thought presented here. What a waste of women's effort.

The geographies of this? From a countryside finishing school to London houses in Belsize Park and St John's Wood and back out to a baron's country house...far from the London I know and love.

[Mohamed Alfatih · Rating 5 out of 5]

كتاب لبرنارد شو في نقد موسيقى الألماني فاجنر
في البدء تحسب أنّ الكتاب مجرد نقد موسيقى لعمل أوبرالي عادي قبل أن يكشف بيرنارد شو عن شيء كبير جدا وهو أنّ عمل فاجنر العظيم (خاتم النبييلونج) هي دراما موسيقية رمزية بالغة الأثر، وهي بعمقها وأصالتها تشكل الرافد الفلسفي ‏الأساسي لأطروحات نيتشه وإنسانه الأعلى، ويَعتبِر عدد كبير جدا من الدارسين أن هذه الدراما الموسيقية شكلت دوراً محوريا في الإنبعاث الحضاري الألماني وإستنهاض الروح الألمانية الأمر الذي حدا بهتلر أن يغلو في توجهه نحو السلطة والمادية وتقديس الجنس الآري وهو بلا شك حياد عن توجه فاجنر ‏والمتعلق بإشاعة روح البطولة وحب الحياة والتحرر من السيطرة المادية وكل ما قبيح.
تتكون دراما خاتم النيبيلونج الموسيقية من أربع مسرحيات:  نهر الراين، ڤالكيري، سيجفريد، وغروب الآلهة.
‏تحتشد خاتم النيبيلونج بالآلهة والأقزام والعمالقة والڤالكيريات والجنيات والبشر حيث استلهم فاغنر أساطير النورز والتيوتون وهي أساطير إسكندنافية وألمانية، قام فاجنر بتوظيف جميع هذه العناصر لحنياً وجعل منها رموزاً للخير والشر والجمال والجشع والحب في عمل درامي جذب إليه جميع المهتمين ‏بالأدب والموسيقى والفلسفة في عصره.
جدير بالذكر أنّ أساطير النورز والتيوتون تتمحور حول ثلاث عقائد وهي البطولة وأبدية الصراع بين الخير والشر وتفوق الإنسان على الآلهة.

[Karan Gupta · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was back in the days, when I had a compulsion for buying books, that I found myself in the back alleys of the famous M.G. Road in Bangalore. I was wandering without purpose when I found myself in front of a second-hand-book-store. I was in love with graphic novels then, having discovered Moore recently, but my browsing through the shop resulted in this book. I made a mental note to come back to the shop again when I needed books but, as happens with most notes, it got lost and I never went back to that shop. However, the book persisted in my collection; hopping shelves in Bangalore and Delhi before I picked it up recently, almost two years since I had picked it up from the small store in Bangalore.

I was introduced to G.B. Shaw in Roorkee through "Candida", one of the plays that was a part of an elective course. I liked his writing then and I had remembered this book being mentioned by a then close friend over our endless telephonic discussions. Hence Shaw's novel was something that held an intrigue and I was looking forward to what lay in store. The novel proved to be quite amusing. The story was interlaced with dollops of humour, so subtle that I still wonder about what it was that the author tried to mock! I initially thought he was mocking socialism, but later it seemed his views on socialism were in the earnest. Maybe the Victorian society as such. Or maybe there was no mockery at all, the humour being a result of the ridiculous nature of the conflicting demands of society from individuals.

The story revolves around a certain Sidney Trefusis who is introduced as an eccentric character. Having found his marriage unbearable, he flees his wife and hides from her. He takes up the life of a common wage worker and is introduced to the young ladies in Alton College, in whose vicinity he has chosen to hide. His social conduct is appalling and he tries his best to cause outrage in social settings and gatherings. His grooming, which he tries to shun so, comes back in his dealings with the ladies of the society, who he never fails to charm. The story twists and turns with Trefusis's socialist propaganda and his resumed social contact with a three ladies of Alton : Jane, Getrude and Agatha. There are flirtations and outrages and absurd social meetings. With Sidney nothing is ever quite simple!

The novel lived up to any expectation that I might have had from it. It was fast paced and thoroughly entertaining. I specially liked the subtle humour and the complete unassuming way that Shaw had weaved it with his story. This will definitely make me look up more of Shaw's novels in the future.

[أحمد · Rating 2 out of 5]

الكتاب يدور حول وجهة نظر برنارد شو إلى مسرحية (خاتم النيبيلونج) بأجزائها الأربعة لفاجنر،،

وهي مستقاة من عالم الأساطير والآلهة والأرواح والخير والشر، ولكن (شو) لا يراها كذلك، فهو في هذا الكتاي يسقط أحداثها بعد تلخيصها على الواقع والنظم التي تحكمه ورموز شخصياتها الأسطورية وإلام ترمز من شخصيات الواقع ..

ثم يقول في مجال الرد عمن قد يقول أن (فاجنر) لم يقصد هذه الإسقاطات وإنما أننا أمام عمل فني جميل لا غير، فقال (شو): أننا نميل إلى تأليه العباقرة تأليهنا للقوة الخالقة للكون، فنعزو إلى المنطق والتدبير ما قد تمليه الغزيرة، .. ، وحين طلب إلى موتسارت أن يفسر أعماله الموسيقية أجاب بقوله : هيهات أن أعلم!

ثم يتحدث عن فاجنر وعن وقت خروج أجزاء مسرحية الخاتم، ليقول بأنه من العبث أن يقول هذا عاقل، لأن جميع الظروف تثبت أن فاجنر أراد أن يقول كلمته بهذه الطريقة عبر الأساطير القديمة، وأن فاجنر نفسه كتب إلى صديق له قائلا:


أن الفنان يحس وهو بين يدي إنتاجه - إذا كان هذا الإنتاج فنًا خالصًا - أنه حيال لغز غامض قد تساوره هو أيضًا أوهام مثلما تساور غيره من الناس سواء بسواء


ذكرتني هذه النقطة برموز نجيب محفوظ!

ثم يتحدث عن موسيقى وألحان هذه المسرحية (التي لحنّها قاجنر، وكتب نصوصها) مبينًا آيات العبقرية فيها، ولم أستمع إليها ولم أفهم تماما ما يقول ولكن حديثه كان شائقًا على أي حال ..

--

الكتاب ترجمة ثروت عكاشة ووقع أكثر من مرة في خطأ لغوي أمقته لتكراره وشيوعه، وكنت أحكم على من يقعون فيه بإفتقارهم إلى الحس اللغوي وأن كاتبه مازال عند خط البداية، وذلك هو كتابة (سويًا) بمعنى (معًا) كان من الأجدر أن يتنزّه عن ذلك!

[Ensaio Sobre o Desassossego · Rating 2 out of 5]

A sinopse deste livro prometia muito, mas não gostei tanto como estava à espera. Não senti empatia pelo protagonista ou por qualquer outra personagem (talvez, Agatha), achei a história incoerente. Começou muito bem, e acabou como um romance aborrecido e sem lógica.

O livro é, supostamente, uma sátira ao socialismo, mas não o entendi assim. Sim, o protagonista era uma caricatura, algo bastante exagerado, mas era sobretudo arrogante, confuso, e estranho. Não recomendo.

No entanto, gostei muito de uma passagem e, apesar de o livro ter sido escrito no século XIX, está extremamente actual: "os homens modernos adoram os ricos como deuses e elegem alguém para seu governante por nenhuma outra razão senão por esse homem ser milionário". Em 1884, já se falava de Donald Trump…

[George Yaiff · Rating 5 out of 5]

You don't have to love the main character to love the book!! This is a great story with twisting plot and sharp, clever prose. Typical GBS!

[Ahmed · Rating 4 out of 5]

Never mind tomorrow. Be like the sun and the meadow, which are not in the least concerned about the coming winter.

I cannot sit at their feasts knowing how much they cost in human misery, and seeing how little they produce of human happiness.

The world is mad nowadays, and is galloping to the deuce as fast as greed can goad it.

I am trying to offend you in order to save myself from falling in love with you. Some fiend enters into me when I am at your side.

You will find three classes of men polite to you—slaves, men who think much of their manners and nothing of you, and your lovers.

She now guessed what was coming, not because she intended to accept, but because, she counted the proposals of marriage she received as a Red Indian counts the scalps he takes.

If they hesitate to strip us naked, or to cut our throats if we offer them the smallest resistance, they will show us more mercy than we ever showed them.

He thinks more highly of you than you deserve; but you, on the other hand, think too lowly of him. When you marry him you must save him from a cruel disenchantment by raising yourself to the level he fancies you have attained.

I began by talking sense, like a man of honor, and kept at it for half an hour, but she would not listen to me. Then I talked romantic nonsense of the cheapest sort for five minutes, and she consented with tears in her eyes.

[Tabitha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyable read, stirred up strong feelings!

[Rita (the_bookthiefgirl) · Rating 3 out of 5]

“O Altruísta”, mais conhecido pelo título “Unsocial Socialist” não me era de todo conhecido até ter visto este exemplar velhinho, que terá passado por várias mãos antes de chegar às prateleiras da @lerdevagar do Mercado de Óbidos. Se ainda não foram, façam este favor 😊

Este livro fez-me, em primeiro lugar, retomar a uma época que se caraterizava pela leitura de romances leves, em que a mulher não mais esperava do que ter a ambição de casar e ter filhos, após passar por uma educação um quanto excessivamente religiosa. Até chegar à parte da sátira, que para mim nunca foi subtil, mas antes direta.

“Para nossa desgraça, a miséria sórdida e o horror sem esperança do seu estudo sobre o destino do homem aplica-se ainda tão bem à sociedade de hoje que o consideramos como o representante, não de uma época mas de todas.”

Na forma de Sydney Tréfusis, um jovem antisocial que abdica da sua riqueza para lutar pelos direitos das classes operárias e camponeses, ideais socialistas são propagados no romance, tendo também como fundo uma história de amor( que provavelmente é muito estranha de se descrever, confesso). No entanto, talvez pelo ridículo da situação, dei por mim a rir nalgumas partes.

A mensagem do livro está tão atual que diríamos que, em todos os séculos, nunca nos poderíamos esquecer desta mensagem mas, no entanto, fazemos.

“porque os homens modernos adoram os ricos como se fossem deuses e escolhem para os governar um homem só pela razão de ser milionário.”

[José Liboy]

I am reading the Riverside edition of this book. Apparently irrelevant details show the Fabian orientation of the narrative. Facts such as the sliding down of bannisters in stairways, something which seems odd and old but which I still see here in my island, seem to link Shaw to punks of today. The novel narrates the life of a young man whcih is a socialist. Sensitive young girls are over selfrightous and carry all the responsabilities. Bankers are ironic and not sour people like characters in Dickens novels. Shaw´s mind may seem to side him with the wealthy, but the fact is he is very realistic.

[Magdalena · Rating 2 out of 5]

An old-fashioned read, I'm afraid.

What starts as a light-hearted description of events at a school for girls, finishes as an embarrassingly boring romance, with some pages on socialism thrown in between.

Witty remarks ('a polite lady who refrained from staring but not from observing') were too scarce to save the book.

[Zdenka · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit old fashioned type of writing and social satire, but a gentle presentation of the origins and the ideas of the socialist movement, especially of the shocking social segregation "by income"...

I liked it. Easy and quick read. I want to read more of G.B.Shaw, as I think that a lot of what he writes still resonates today.

[May Ling]

This is a story that was amazing for its time. It's too English for my personal fiction tastes, but I do see how it would be considered excellently produced literature. Thematically, the female characters are really quite special for the period.

[Roma Kukchishvili · Rating 4 out of 5]

ნამდვილად კარგი წიგნია მათთვის ვისაც ვაგნერი უყვარს და მათთვისაც ვისაც ნორდული მითოლოგია აინტერესებს <3

[მარიამ ბუცხრიკიძე · Rating 5 out of 5]

მხოლოდ განხილვა არ გეგონოთ უფრო მეტია
ჭეშმარიტად

[Jason Levin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Entertaining. If you enjoyed Pygmalion or Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Grey or Importance of Being Earnest then you’ll enjoy the witty wordplay and conversation of the gentleman himself Jeffrey Smilash.

[Özgün Barış · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bernard Shaw okumayı liseden beri aklımdan geçiriyordum fakat hep önemsemeyip erteledim. Tesadüfen biri bu kitabı bana ödünç vermeyi teklif ettiği için zamanı geldi deyip başladım.

Ana karakterin Engels'ten esinlenildiği kanısına kapıldım. Ondan esinlenilmiş bir karikatür. Dikkat: Engels'in bir karikatürü değil, ondan esinlenilip karikatür haline getirilmiş bir karakter.
Ana karakter, Manchester'lı bir pamuk tüccarı, iplik fabrikası sahibinin oğlu. Engels de, aynı işi yapan bir fabrikatörün oğlu. Karakterimiz, eşi öldükten sonra eşinin kız kardeşiyle evleniyor. Engels, gayrı resmi eşi (evlenmediler) öldükten sonra onun kız kardeşiyle evlendi. Yine, karakterimiz, gelirini Uluslararası İşçi Birliği'ni kurmak için yaptığı çalışmalara harcıyor. 'Yoldaş'larına maddi yardımda bulunmaktan kaçınmıyor. Engels, Uluslararası İşçi Birliği'nin kurucularındandır ve Marks'ın geçim kaynaklarından biridir. Ayrıca Engels'in güzel kadınlara düşkün, flörtöz bir adam olduğunu anlatır onu tanıyanlar. Karakterimiz de kadınlarla her fırsatta flört etmeyi seven biri.

Roman hakkında fazla bir araştırmaya girişmediğimden esinlenme izlenimimin doğru olup olmadığını öğrenemedim. Yine de, böyle düşünmek için yeterince data var sanırım.

Roman olarak, hem estetik açıdan hem de derinlik açısından, beklentimin altında kalsa da, asla beğenmediğimi söyleyemem. Çok güldüğüm cümleler oldu. Bernard Shaw'ın mizahını sevdim.

Şöyle bir özelliği de var: İngiliz kapitalizminin gelişim sürecini ana karakterin diyalogları aracılığıyla özet biçiminde aktarmış. Karakterinde esinlendiğini düşündüğüm Engels'in kitaplarında yazanların aynısı. Gerçekten bire bir aynısı. Bunu neden tercih etmiş, hiçbir fikrim yok. Romana zayıflık verdiğini düşünüyorum.

Son olarak; bu kitabı oyun olarak biliyordum elime alana kadar. Değilmiş demek ki...

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

Title explained in appendix

Shaw’s last novel is very enjoyable, though I don’t doubt that the politics and speeches annoy quite a few readers. (Their opinion is not being polled…)

[Manik Sukoco · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sidney Trefusis, son and heir to a cotton merchant, despises the world of class and privilege he was born into and takes up the socialist cause. Deserting his wife of six weeks, he poses as a laborer and-once rumbled in that guise-as a gentleman agitator for the socialist cause. But chief among his people to reform and convert are the society women in his circle who are simply expected to be unthinking adornments to their husbands who offer "Class" and "Good breeding" to atone for the vapid life they offer. If women can be made to wake up to their condition, surely the socialist cause will advance far quicker!
Shaw's 1884 novel is entertaining enough, but isn't really sure what it wants to be-the comedy of the early chapters soon switching to political preaching and melancholy. Trefusis is a ridiculous prig and the naivety of his politics is made more grating by the fact there is no challenge to them. That capitalism is brutal-earning the merchants such as Trefusis's father more than they could ever hope to spend, whilst the working class are denied the right to earn even enough to subsist-is undeniably the great social evil of its (and subsequent) days; but Shaw is naive in thinking flowery political solutions that sound great in theory, rarely(never?) translate into reality as politics (as any reader of Orwell will tell you) is about power over the people; NOT for the people.
Perhaps a better answer already existed-Cadbury who built quality homes for his workers and paid them well, or the John Lewis model where the workers (still to this day) take a share in the profits they help generate-and could have been used by social reformers to force all capitalists to follow a just model, whereas the political model just caused a superb reason for them to entrench their position.
All in all, 'An Unsocial Socialist' is a bit of a quaint curiosity now as far as the politics goes, but it still stands up as a beacon for the feminist cause and the role of women in society. It also gives a useful window to look into and see the winds for social change that were blowing in to Victorian Britain and the world in general.

[Mac · Rating 2 out of 5]

"An Unsocial Socialist" was what finally did it. It caused me to take a pause from reading George Bernard Shaw for a while. I have been reading his works for probably over a year now but not always with pleasure. Though he's often claimed as the second greatest English-language dramatist after Shakespeare, I would not rank him nearly so high. I have read nearly all his public domain works, but the last few will have to wait for now. I need a break!

Back to "An Unsocial Socialist." It is one of Shaw's handful of novels, mostly written before he turned to playwriting. It was interesting to see that he uses the same scene-setting technique here in a novel as he does in his plays. In both cases, he will typically describe the room in great (boring to me) detail before proceeding with the action. Thus it seems that his style of writing evolved naturally into a more congenial genre. His plays are novelistic, in other words.

The problem with this book is that it is all over the place. At first it seems that the main characters will be a set of girls at a boarding school. But no, the real protagonist (and unsocial socialist of the title) is a beggar they later meet, who is actually a rich person pretending to be poor. It's hard to care much about any of the characters, which by the way is the same problem I have with most of Shaw's plays. Unlike the plays, the time jumps way ahead through the book. Many of the girls in the opening chapters get married, etc.

Unless you're desperately curious to see what Shaw was like as a novelist, stay away from this one. As for me, I'll be glad to take a vacation in the land of Camelot for a while...

[Maria Ch · Rating 1 out of 5]

It is very rarely that one comes upon a book in which its main character is so unsympathetic. It is often we encounter books with flawed main characters but somehow the author manipulates the reader into liking them and before we know it, we are rooting for the anti-hero or we are justifying their faults and bad decision making. This is not the case in An Unsocial socialist. I found it very difficult to follow this story because it had very little interest for me. Trefusis is not a likeable character, Henrietta or Agatha are not either. None of their actions are justifiable or endorsed. Everything in this story is a bit superficial and at times even random, and even though I forced myself into reading it, I can hardly say I enjoyed it and was very relieved when I reached the end.

[Joyce · Rating 3 out of 5]

Shaw's main character certainly is unsocial. He says very pertinent things about the unfairness of the social order. He says reasonable things about the unimportance of romance. But he seems over all to say that emotions are unnecessary, art is a fraud, reason is the only thing that counts and humanity is hopeless. Read the first 2/3 of the book to get some great quotes about socialism, then feel free to go about your way elsewhere.

[Penny · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having only read Bernard Shaw's plays, I wasn't sure if this novel would be too heavy. Not at all - it pranced along in a jolly way which seems much at variance with the subject! One of those stories which I think will keep coming back to me and keep me thinking. The Socialist sentiments seem a little outdated now, but are in interesting glimpse into the late Victorian movement. A good introduction to much heavier works.

[Ana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh my, did I suffer through this book. I can recognize some merit in its satire, it's funny more than a few times. But one third in it just goes radically downhill and the main character is absolutely insuperable, as I guess he's supposed to be, but c'mon. All the other characters are equally dull and annoying. It started of very promising, I believe, but there's just not much to love in it at all.

[Guilherme Ferrão · Rating 1 out of 5]

A mildly amusing book with an average story and characters. Provides good insight on the living conditions of the late 19th century and clarifies the revolutionary way of thinking in a few key aspects, even if some of it is somewhat outdates.

EDIT: a fair warning: there are quite a few misogynistic passages involved, which represent more Shaw's views on women than socialists'.

[Jo Wun · Rating 3 out of 5]

Schoolgirl hijinks in late 19th century England, linked via some love interest, to a bit of activism for socialism. The politics of a bygone era are now not much of a distraction from a good story, in the way they may have been at the time of its first publication.

[João Miranda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Livro bem interessante na segunda parte. Um ensaio socialista no meio do século XIX em Inglaterra; uma pequena visão distópica e satírica do autor. A personagem Trefusis consegue salvar o enredo e a alma do socialismo.