The Unforgiving Years (Paperback)

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The Case of Comrade Tulayev (New York Review Books Classics) by Victor Serge 4.9 out of 5 stars (7)  £6.99

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Memoirs of a Revolutionary (The Iowa Series in Literary Nonfiction) by Adam Hochschild 5.0 out of 5 stars (2)  £22.33

Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman 4.9 out of 5 stars (15)  £5.99

A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army 1941-1945 by Vasilii Grossman 4.5 out of 5 stars (10)  £6.99

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Review
""Unforgiving Years," published in France in 1971 and translated into English this year, is a visionary literary work rooted in the political tragedy of a Soviet secret agent who tries to take back his existence from the Party. The settings are prewar Paris, the siege of Leningrad, the fall of Berlin, and a postwar refuge in Mexico. This is the ultimate farewell to Communism." --"The Boston Globe"
""The Unforgiving Years,.".has now at last been translated into electric English by the indefatigable Richard Greeman...It's a seething, hallucinatory novel..." --"Harper's"
"Born in Brussels of Russian revolutionary exiles, Serge (1890-1947) has long had a reputation as polemicist and journalist, but this powerful novel of the descent into WWII makes a strong case for his political fiction...Serge remains sophisticated even during the book's more noirish moments, and action sequences form an inseparable part of his hypnotic, prophetic vision." --"Publisher's Weekly" (Starred Reveiw)
"The work of the writer Victor Serge faultlessly captures the labyrinth of bureaucratic incrimination into which the Soviet Union descended." -"The Atlantic"
"A witness to revolution and reaction in Europe between the wars, Serge searingly evoked the epochal hopes and shattering setbacks of a generation of leftists...Yet under the bleakest of conditions, Serge's optimism, his humane sympathies and generous spirit, never waned. A radical misfit, no faction, no sect could contain him; he inhabited a lonely no-man's-land all his own. These qualities are precisely what make him such an inspiring, even moving figure." -"Bookforum"
"Both "Unforgiving Years" and "The Case of Comrade Tulayev" in 2003have been wonderfully translated by Richard Greeman, who has spent his academic and post-academic life bringing to prominence Serge's writings as literature in the first ranks of modernism and in the mainstream of Russian and French literature. His foreword to "Unforgiving Years" is worth the price of the book, which deserves attention as well for reminding us that the political novel was once a prominent genre and fulfilled a need hard to meet in this self-absorbed literary period. It also gives us a clear-eyed picture of Serge's sad last years when hope, if it existed at all, was mostly the frail hope of inmates in prisons and concentration camps." -World Socialist Web Site
"A worker, a militant, an intellectual, an internationalist by experience and conviction, an inveterate optimist, and always poor...He took part in three revolutions, spent a decade in captivity, published more than thirty books and left behind thousands of pages of unpublished manuscripts, correspondence and articles. He was born into one political exile, died in another, and was politically active in seven countries. His life was spent in permanent political opposition...His refusal to surrender to either the Soviet state or the capitalist West assured his marginality and consigned him to a life of persecution and poverty. Despite living in the shadows, Serge's work and his life amount to a corrective to Stalinism, and an alternative to the market." -Susan Weissman, "Victor Serge"
"I know of no other writer with whom Serge can be very usefully compared. The essence of the man and his books is to be found in his attitude to the truth. There have of course been many scrupulously honest writers. But forSerge the value of the truth extended far beyond the simple (or complex) telling of it." -John Berger
"Serge, who has been championed by Susan Sontag and many others, was born in Brussels in 1899 to emigre Russians who'd fled the Czar. He became a political activist, was jailed and arrived in Russia in 1919 to support the Bolshevik Revolution. He rose high in the Comintern before falling foul of Stalin and finding himself in jail and then exile. He was steamrolled by history, and out of this experience he crafted a series of extraordinary memoirs and novels. "Unforgiving Years," here translated into English for the first time by Richard Greeman, tells the story of two revolutionaries, D and his friend Daria, as they approach, endure and survive World War II. This is downbeat and dangerous mise-en-scene...written for real by a man who was there." --Los Angeles Times

Synopsis
In pre-World War II Paris, secret agent D, along with his lover Nadine, attempt to escape from the Soviet intelligence service.

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1 Review 5 star:  (1) 4 star:    (0) 3 star:    (0) 2 star:    (0) 1 star:    (0)           Average Customer Review 5.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review)		Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Most Helpful Customer Reviews   9 of 9 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 out of 5 stars "Wild, dark times are rumbling toward us,, 2 April 2008 By  Leonard Fleisig "Len" (Washington, D.C.) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)       and the prophet who wishes to write a new apocalypse will have to invent entirely new beasts, and beasts so terrible that the ancient animal symbols of St. John will seem like cooing doves and cupids in comparison." Heinrich Heine Victor Serge did not have to invent entirely new beasts to pen his vision of the Second World War in the "Unforgiving Years". The beasts that were unleashed by the 20th century's apocalypse were not Serge's creation. However, what Serge has done so masterfully here is to craft a story that looks at this world through the eyes of a few of its participants. The result is a horrific, almost hallucinatory look, at a world gone mad. Serge was born in Brussels in 1890 to Russian emigre parents. He returned to Russia early in 1919 in order to support the newly created Soviet Union. He served as both a writer and journalist. However, Serge was one of the first of the old-line revolutionaries to oppose Stalin's concentration of power. He was arrested, expelled from the party, released, and arrested again. Finally, in 1936 after a public campaign by leading European political and literary figures (Andre Gide was one); Serge was released and deported to France. He eventually found his way to Mexico where he died, penniless, in 1947. "Unforgiving Years" is set in four sections and in four locations. In the first section, set in Paris in the days just before the start of WWII, "Secret Agent", we are introduced to Agent D. D is a Soviet agent who has finally had enough of the purges, paranoia, and betrayal that marked Soviet life (both at home and abroad) during the height of Stalin's purges. He has no plans to defect; he simply wants to escape to some place off the grid. He talks to Daria (the one character to appear in all four sections of the book), another agent and former lover to join him. His preparations and their discussions about his departure form the heart of "Secret Agent". This section is filled with the sort of beautifully realized self-critical examination that marked Koestler's dialogues in "Darkness at Noon". It is a remarkable piece of writing. The second section, "The Flame Beneath the Snow", is set in Leningrad during the worst days of the 900-day siege. Daria has returned from internal exile in Kazakhstan to assist the Red Army's (via the security forces) defense of Leningrad. This is a street-level look at a Soviet city under siege. This is not a look at the battle as much as it is an examination of the life of Daria and her conflicting feelings as she goes about her job amidst death, destruction, and slow-starvation. All feelings are cast aside, or seemingly cast aside. What is left is not love but random acts of gratification. The third section, "Brigitte, Lighting, Lilacs", takes us two a German city in the final days of the war. Daria is operating behind the lines as an agent, doing what she can to obtain information while protecting partisans and foreign (Eastern European) refugees. What is remarkable here is Serge's treatment of the German civilian population caught in the constant bombardment and devastation of their city. Writing in 1946, when the full scope of the horror of the camps and the devastation of the war generally was still fresh in everyone's mind, Serge's considered treatment of the people of this city presaged W.G. Sebald's Natural History of Destruction by fifty years or so. Last, Daria and Agent D are reunited at the end of the war in a remote village in Mexico. The conclusion to"Unforgiving Years"is very powerful and,in its own way, entirely fitting. "Unforgiving Years" paints a picture of a world gone mad as seen through the eyes of Daria and the circle of people she meets along the way. Serge is brutally honest in his view of man in what has to be considered a brutish state of nature. Life is nasty, brutish, and short and people react accordingly. Serge's writing matches this mood and that is what I meant when I said his writing was almost hallucinatory. It jumps in mood and pace seemingly at whim. A character goes from thinking `big thoughts' to focusing on the minutest aspect of a random daily act. But I was engaged from the first page and had trouble putting the book down. As noted so aptly in the introduction by translator Richard Greeman, Serge asks "how to live if history no longer has a meaning? What remains of human consciousness if society has indeed entered a regressive era of ideological repression and technological pan-destruction?" These are questions that, sad to say, seem as timely now as they were in 1946. "Unforgiving Years" was finished just before Serge's death. It is, undeniably, his masterpiece. Highly recommended. L. Fleisig Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this) Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review › See all customer reviews...		Search Customer Reviews Only search this product's reviews

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