The great prince died
Subtitle: a novel about the assassination of Trotsky
By: Bernard Wolfe ; with a new afterforeword by William T. Vollmann
Contributors: Vollmann, William T., writer of introduction
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2015
Place of publication: Chicago; London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 410
ISBN-13: 9780226260785; 9780226260648
Subjects: Fiction; Revolutionaries; FICTION; General
Description: On August 20, 1940, Marxist philosopher, politician, and revolutionary Leon Trotsky was attacked with an ice axe in his home in Coyoacán, Mexico. He died the next day. In The Great Prince Died, Bernard Wolfe offers his lyrical, fictionalized account of Trotsky's assassination as witnessed through the eyes of an array of characters: the young American student helping to translate the exiled Trotsky's work (and to guard him), the Mexican police chief, a Rumanian revolutionary, the assassin and his handlers, a poor Mexican "peón," and Trotsky himself. Drawing on his own experiences working as the exiled Trotsky's secretary and bodyguard and mixing in digressions on Mexican culture, Stalinist tactics, and Bolshevik history, Wolfe interweaves fantasy and fact, delusion and journalistic reporting to create one of the great political novels of the past century.
Table of contents: title: ""Diosdado""; ""Chapter I""; ""Chapter II ""; ""Chapter III""; ""Chapter IV""; ""Chapter V""; ""Diosdado""; ""Chapter VI""; ""Chapter VII""; ""Chapter VIII""; ""Chapter IX""; ""Chapter X""; ""Diosdado""; ""Chapter XI""; ""Chapter XII""; ""Chapter XIII""; ""Chapter XIV""; ""Diosdado""; ""Chapter XV""; ""Chapter XVI""; ""Chapter XVII""; ""Diosdado""; ""Appendix""; ""Author's Notes""; ""Afterword""