Victor Serge

Do we count Victor Serge as a Russian author, as he wrote in French? Whatever, the newly released Notebooks from NYRB are amazing. Give a real insight into the writers mind, with his thoughts on revolution, war, writing, politics, history and life. Highly recommended as are all his books!

He was certainly a Russian author; Chaadaev and Kropotkin also wrote in French, and I'm pretty sure no one would deny their Russianness. He's one of my few 20th-century heroes -- he saw through hypocrisy to the underlying evil and wrote brilliantly about what he saw and knew. I love what I've read of his and look forward to Notebooks: 1936-1947 whenever I get the chance to read it!

The Notebooks are pretty incredible - I finished them after about a ten day stint of intensive reading. And I completely agree with what you say about him - that’s exactly how I feel. I’ve a post on the Notebooks coming up on my blog in a few days, but it barely scratches the surface. The book is brim full of riches.

My thoughts on the Notebooks are now up on my blog here:

https://kaggsysbookishramblings.wordpress.com/2019/08/16/an-eternal-vagabond-of-...

*bump*

Lovely NYRB released Victor Serge's wonderful novel Last Times back in the summer of 2022. It's as great as his other novels and I wrote about it here:

https://kaggsysbookishramblings.wordpress.com/2022/08/22/we-do-not-choose-our-pr...