or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
 
 
More Buying Choices
17 used & new from £0.01
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
 
   
My Revolutions
 
 
Share your own customer images
Publisher: learn how customers can search inside this book.

My Revolutions (Hardcover)

by Hari Kunzru (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
RRP: £16.99
Price: £14.44 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
You Save: £2.55 (15%)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
In stock.
Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk. Gift-wrap available.

Only 2 left in stock--order soon (more on the way).

Want guaranteed delivery by Tuesday, November 10? Choose Express delivery at checkout. See Details
9 new from £7.99 8 used from £0.01
Other Editions: RRP: Our Price: Other Offers:
Hardcover 6 used & new from £4.68
Unknown Binding (Unabridged) Order it used

Frequently Bought Together

Customers buy this book with Tommy - The Movie (The Who) [DVD] DVD ~ Oliver Reed

My Revolutions + Tommy - The Movie (The Who) [DVD]
Price For Both: £18.32

Show availability and shipping details

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

The Impressionist

The Impressionist

by Hari Kunzru
3.6 out of 5 stars (25)  £5.99
Transmission

Transmission

by Hari Kunzru
2.9 out of 5 stars (13)  £4.98
Something to Tell You

Something to Tell You

by Hanif Kureishi
2.7 out of 5 stars (12)  £4.79
His Illegal Self

His Illegal Self

by Peter Carey
3.0 out of 5 stars (6)  £4.97
Darkmans

Darkmans

by Nicola Barker
2.9 out of 5 stars (30) 
› Explore similar items

Product details

  • Hardcover: 288 pages
  • Publisher: Hamish Hamilton (30 Aug 2007)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0241143101
  • ISBN-13: 978-0241143100
  • Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 15.2 x 3 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 364,312 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    •  Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Product Description

Book Description

Love, idealism and revolution: what happens when one man’s radical past returns to detonate his carefully constructed present?


Product Description

It’s the day before Mike Frame’s fiftieth birthday and his quiet provincial life is suddenly falling apart. But perhaps it doesn’t matter, because it’s not his life in the first place. He has a past that his partner Miranda and step-daughter Sam know nothing about, lived under another name amidst the turbulence of the revolutionary armed struggle of the 1970s. Now Mike is seeing ghosts – a dead ex-lover and an old friend who wants to reminisce. Miranda, who once spoke about alternative lifestyles with the emphasis on alternative, rather than lifestyles, is reinventing herself as a thrusting nineties businesswoman. Mike can no longer ignore the contradiction between who he is and who he once was. Which side was he on back then? And which side is he on now? Gripping, moving, provocative and passionate, My Revolutions brings to brilliant life both the radical idealism of the post-’68 generation and the darker currents which ran beneath it, the eddies of which still shape our history today.
See all Product Description

Tag this product

 (What's this?)
Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items.
Your tags: Add your first tag
 
See most popular tags

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

My Revolutions
57% buy the item featured on this page:
My Revolutions 4.0 out of 5 stars (1)
£14.44
My Revolutions
32% buy
My Revolutions 4.7 out of 5 stars (3)
£5.98
Transmission
7% buy
Transmission 2.9 out of 5 stars (13)
£4.98
The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century
3% buy
The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century 4.3 out of 5 stars (38)
£8.06
Explore similar items
 

Customer Reviews

1 Review
5 star:    (0)
4 star:
 (1)
3 star:    (0)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review)
 
 
 
 
Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars "Hand out the arms and ammo, 2 April 2008
By Leonard Fleisig "Len" (Washington, D.C.) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)      
We're going to blast our way through here
We've got to get together sooner or later
Because the revolution's here, and you know its right." Thunderclap Newman

For many the revolution of the 60s and early 70s (such as it was) was played out in song. Whether the Beatles, the Who, or Thunderclap Newman, there was a lot of talk, a lot of song, and plenty of demos and marches. But for the most part talk about revolution was just talk. There were some notable exceptions. Paris, Mexico and the Prague Spring in 1968 were a few. In the U.S. some elements of the anti-war movement, most notably the Weather Underground morphed into violence. The U.K. had the "Angry Brigade" and it is that group that provides the historical background for Hari Kunzru's new work, "My Revolutions".

"My Revolutions" takes us back to a time when something was in the air, but makes the reader question what that something actually was. Kunzru takes us down this path with one Mike Frame, a man approaching 50, leading a quiet, comfortable suburban life with his partner of 16-years, Miranda. We soon discover that Mike Frame is not at all what he seems to be. Rather, his real name is Chris Carver, a radical in the 60s who went underground after a series of robberies and bombings at the height of the anti-war movement in the UK. After a vacation on the continent Frame's life begins to unravel. He spots a woman there who appears to be one of his old comrades in arms. He is then approached by a second old comrade, one who seeks to blackmail Frame/Carver into revealing that yet another comrade, now a highly placed government official, was once part of the violent fringe of the anti-war movement in the UK. The novel alternates between the unraveling of Frame's life and the back story of Carver's. Kunzru does an excellent job in keeping the narrative going while jumping between Carver's story and that of his alter ego, Frame. Each story is laid out in such a way that the book's climax arrives just when the old and new identities are fully revealed to the reader.

Kunzru, who is too young to have lived through this time, gets the details perfectly. His description of the social and political life at University during that time was spot on. (Carver was at LSE at around the same time I was in Manchester.) The squats, sit-in at the student union, the endlessly morphing student political groups, each a variant of the other, each claiming to the true interpreter of the genius of Marx and Lenin (International Marxist Group, International Socialists, the old-line CP, etc.) all peopled by earnest students eager to change the world. The dead seriousness was matched by the same sort of endless conversations, the self-critical examinations and random anger set out perfectly by Kunzru. So to were Carver's recollections of random couplings as a political act, as a way of distancing oneself from the mores of the bourgeoisie. The book is filled with little snippets that really capture the time and Kunzru had me nodding nostalgically (if ruefully) time and time again.

At the same time, though, this spot-on accuracy did have one unintended side effect. Kunzru not only got the atmospherics right, he got the personalities right. As much as the characters made me wax nostalgic for the days of free love it also reminded me of just how utterly self-important and devoid of humor this all was. The IMG etc. and all its various and sundry splinters would never be confused with International Groucho Marxists. Consequently, Frame/Carver and his contemporaries are not exactly the sort of people a reader is likely to feel any great deal of empathy for. While Kunzru treats his characters' underlying idealism with no little bit of respect the sheer utter futility of their efforts marks them come across as little more than amateur, middle-class nihilists earnestly trying to make the world a better place by convincing themselves that destruction is a prerequisite to building a just society. That is not to criticize the book or the story in any way, I very much enjoyed the characters for the flawed, once-well-intended beings they were in their callow youth. But a reader who needs to feel some sort of emotional investment in a fictional character may be disappointed. I don't think that is an essential prerequisite for a successful novel but different readers may not feel that way.

"My Revolutions" is a worthy successor to Kunzru's earlier book, Transmission. It also made a nice companion book to His Illegal Self by Peter Carey.
Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)


Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
 
 
 
Only search this product's reviews


Customer Discussions

This product's forum
Discussion Replies Latest Post
No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 


Active discussions in related forums
   
Related forums

Listmania!

Create a Listmania! list

Look for similar items by category

Look for similar items by subject








i.e., each product must be in subject 1 AND subject 2 AND ...

Feedback

Ad

Your Recent History

 (What's this?)

After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in.