Overview

Translated from the French by Mitchell Abidor and Richard Greeman Victor Serge's ""Notebooks"" provide an intensely personal account of the legendary Franco-Russian writer and revolutionary's last decade. Begun after Serge was liberated from Stalin's Russia, they evoke Popular Front France, the Fall of Paris, the 'Surrealist Chateau' in Marseille, and the flight to the new world. They are replete with vivid life portraits (Gide, Breton, St.-Exupéry, Lévi-Strauss), moving evocations of fallen revolutionary comrades (Gramsci, Nin, Radek, Trotsky) and of doomed colleagues among the Soviet writers (Fedin, Pilniak, Mandelstam, Gorky). Serge's Mexican ""Notebooks"" provide a fascinating account of his exploration of pre-Columbian cultures, his preoccupation with earthquakes and volcanoes, his sympathetic curiosity for the indigenous peasants. They also portray political and cultural figures in Mexico City, from the exiles' psychoanalytic circle, to painters like Dr. Atl and Leonora Carrington and poets like Octavio Paz, while painting a vivid self-portrait and conveying the intense loneliness Serge also felt in these years, cut off as he was from Europe, deprived of a political platform, , prey to angina attacks and anxiously in love with a younger woman.

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9781681372709

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[Serge was] an unparalleled witness, at least to his time. But he was an unpopular man. It's precisely what one might adore about him--the tolerance, the internationalism, the political sagacity, the ability to be both artist and doer, the attachment to the ideals of workers' democracy and freedom of thought--that galled many of his contemporaries. --Lorna Scott Fox, London Review of Books He was an eyewitness of events of world historical importance, of great hope and even greater tragedy. His political recollections are very important, because they reflect so well the mood of this lost generation.... --Partisan Review Serge is one of the most compelling of twentieth-century ethical and literary heroes. --Susan Sontag

Serge is one of the most compelling of twentieth-century ethical and literary heroes. --Susan Sontag He was an eyewitness of events of world historical importance, of great hope and even greater tragedy. His political recollections are very important, because they reflect so well the mood of this lost generation.... --Partisan Review He was in fact an unparalleled witness, at least to his time. But he was an unpopular man. It's precisely what one might adore about him--the tolerance, the internationalism, the political sagacity, the ability to be both artist and doer, the attachment to the ideals of workers' democracy and freedom of thought--that galled many of his contemporaries. --Lorna Scott Fox, London Review of Books

Author Information

Victor Serge (1890-1947), born Victor Lvovich Kibalchich, was a Russian writer and revolutionary. His classic Memoirs of a Revolutionary and his last novels, Unforgiving Years and The Case of Comrade Tulayev, as well as his Conquered City and Midnight in the Century, are available as NYRB Classics. Richard Greeman has translated and written the introductions for five of Serge's novels (including Unforgiving Years and Conquered City). Mitch Abidor is a translator of French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Esperanto.

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