NYRB Classics discussion

The Case of Comrade Tulayev



Publication Date: June 30, 2004
Pages: 336
Introduction by Susan Sontag.
Translated from the French by Willard R. Trask.
Originally published in 1949.

One cold Moscow night, Comrade Tulayev, a high government official, is shot dead on the street, and the search for the killer begins. In this panoramic vision of the Soviet Great Terror, the investigation leads all over the world, netting a whole series of suspects whose only connection is their innocence—at least of the crime of which they stand accused. But The Case of Comrade Tulayev, unquestionably the finest work of fiction ever written about the Stalinist purges, is not just a story of a totalitarian state. Marked by the deep humanity and generous spirit of its author, the legendary anarchist and exile Victor Serge, it is also a classic twentieth-century tale of risk, adventure, and unexpected nobility to set beside Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls and André Malraux’s Man's Fate.

This was good.

I like the way the cover photo - (I'm assuming that's a photo of Victor Serge?) is creased and damaged - it's an echo of the damage and violence done to the people in Stalin's purges. That white blot on his eye could represent a bullet hole.