- Publisher: Little, Brown
- Year: 2019
- Format: Hardback
- Pages: 748pp
- Illustrated: Yes
- Dimensions: 241x160mm
- Condition: New
- Weight: 1.1kg
- ISBN: 9781408707999
- Product code: 517553
Cold Warriors
Writers Who Waged the Literary Cold War
Duncan White New Hardback Illustrated
Postscript summary
The CIA dropping copies of Animal Farm into Poland sounds fanciful in the age of email and social media, but the printed word was used – whether promoted, censored or silenced – by both East and West during the Cold War. Duncan White’s literary history of the period from the 1930s to 1991 tells the stories of the writers who found themselves locked into this dangerous conflict, among them Orwell, Greene, Akhmatova and Solzhenitsyn in the USSR and Le Carré in Berlin.
Product information
Full publisher description
'White handles hefty quantities of research effortlessly, combining multiple biographies with a broader overview of the period. His energetic, anecdote-laden prose will have you hooked all the way from Orwell to le Carre' Sunday Times, Books of the Year
'Cold Warriors reads like a thriller . . . ambitious, intelligent, searching history' The Times
In this age of 24-hour news coverage, where rallying cries are made on Twitter and wars are waged in cyberspace as much as on the ground, the idea of a novel as a weapon that can wield any power feels almost preposterous.
The Cold War was a time when destruction was merely the press of a button away, but when the real battle between East and West was over the minds and hearts of their people. In this arena the pen really was mightier than the sword.
This is a gripping, richly-populated history of spies and journalists, protest and propaganda, idealism and betrayal. And it is the story of how literature changed the course of the Cold War just as much as how Cold War would change the course of literature. Using hitherto classified security files and new archival research White explores the ways in which authors were harnessed by both East and West to impose maximum damage on the opposition; how writers played a pivotal role (sometimes consciously, often not) in the conflict; and how literature became something that was worth fighting and dying for.
With a cast that includes George Orwell, Arthur Koestler, Graham Greene, Boris Pasternak, Andrei Sinyavsky, Mary McCarthy and John le Carre, and taking the reader from Spain to America to England and to Russia, this is narrative history at its most enthralling and most pertinent - pertinent because even if on the face of it there is a huge difference between 140 characters and 100,000 words, at the heart of both is the power of stories to change the fate of nations.
'Cold Warriors reads like a thriller . . . ambitious, intelligent, searching history' The Times
In this age of 24-hour news coverage, where rallying cries are made on Twitter and wars are waged in cyberspace as much as on the ground, the idea of a novel as a weapon that can wield any power feels almost preposterous.
The Cold War was a time when destruction was merely the press of a button away, but when the real battle between East and West was over the minds and hearts of their people. In this arena the pen really was mightier than the sword.
This is a gripping, richly-populated history of spies and journalists, protest and propaganda, idealism and betrayal. And it is the story of how literature changed the course of the Cold War just as much as how Cold War would change the course of literature. Using hitherto classified security files and new archival research White explores the ways in which authors were harnessed by both East and West to impose maximum damage on the opposition; how writers played a pivotal role (sometimes consciously, often not) in the conflict; and how literature became something that was worth fighting and dying for.
With a cast that includes George Orwell, Arthur Koestler, Graham Greene, Boris Pasternak, Andrei Sinyavsky, Mary McCarthy and John le Carre, and taking the reader from Spain to America to England and to Russia, this is narrative history at its most enthralling and most pertinent - pertinent because even if on the face of it there is a huge difference between 140 characters and 100,000 words, at the heart of both is the power of stories to change the fate of nations.
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517553
Cold Warriors
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/History
/History/Highlights/Russian History
/Fiction/Highlights/Banned Books
/History/Military History/Categories/Cold War
/Non-Fiction/Categories/Literature, Poetry & Classics
/Non-Fiction/Categories/Literature, Poetry & Classics/Literature
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<p>The CIA dropping copies of <i>Animal Farm</i> into Poland sounds fanciful in the age of email and social media, but the printed word was used – whether promoted, censored or silenced – by both East and West during the Cold War. Duncan White’s literary history of the period from the 1930s to 1991 tells the stories of the writers who found themselves locked into this dangerous conflict, among them Orwell, Greene, Akhmatova and Solzhenitsyn in the USSR and Le Carré in Berlin.</p>
Hardback
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0
add-to-cart
rrp_info:£25.00
productId:64237
bic_code:D, HBTW
D, HBTW
£25.00
Duncan White
General
241x160mm
Little, Brown
No
Hardback
The Cold War
Literature & Poetry
