Product Description
A New York Review Books OriginalUnforgiving Years is a thrilling and terrifying journey into the disastrous, blazing core of the twentieth century. Victor Serge’s final novel, here translated into English for the first time, is at once the most ambitious, bleakest, and most lyrical of this neglected major writer’s works.The book is arranged into four sections, like the panels of an immense mural or the movements of a symphony. In the first, D, a lifelong revolutionary who has broken with the Communist Party and expects retribution at any moment, flees through the streets of prewar Paris, haunted by the ghosts of his past and his fears for the future. Part two finds D’s friend and fellow revolutionary Daria caught up in the defense of a besieged Leningrad, the horrors and heroism of which Serge brings to terrifying life. The third part is set in Germany. On a dangerous assignment behind the lines, Daria finds herself in a city destroyed by both Allied bombing and Nazism, where the populace now confronts the prospect of total defeat. The novel closes in Mexico, in a remote and prodigiously beautiful part of the New World where D and Daria are reunited, hoping that they may at last have escaped the grim reckonings of their modern era.A visionary novel, a political novel, a novel of adventure, passion, and ideas, of despair and, against all odds, of hope, Unforgiving Years is a rediscovered masterpiece by the author of The Case of Comrade Tulayev

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 7 reviews)

Exceptional evocation and insight into people by Daniel Raphael

5 Stars
November 08, 2009
This would be an outstanding book for its writing alone. The translator deserves high praise for rendering this into subtly nuanced English. This is crucial, for Serge is fictionally recreating and evoking the mentality of people agonizing over matters of survival, loyalty, meaning, and how to proceed with their lives. The setting is pre-, during, and post-World War II, with the main characters all being former or current operatives of the Comintern of that time. Serge was himself both a life-long anarchist and someone who returned to the Leninist Soviet Union in hopes of helping the Left Opposition to prevent the final destruction of the revolution by Stalinism. He was one of the few released from imprisonment and actually allowed to leave the country, largely due to an international outcry on his behalf. Perhaps it was his own, very painful and yet highly principled life that enabled the author to have great sensitivity to people's inward processes. He knew from his own struggles what it was like to weigh ideology that might mandate sending dissidents or outright innocents to their deaths--or worse--and he portrays a spectrum of choices no one of which is without significant flaw. It is in this universe--expressed outwardly by burning, demolished buildings and starving populations--that he presents to us the seemingly chimerical human wish for simple solidarity and tenderness. This is a powerful book, and the first one I have read by Serge. I hope to read all of his work; it will be time well spent.

Terrifying by B. T. Sampath

4 Stars
August 19, 2009
With youthful enthusiasm, deeply committed to end poverty and determined to bring about a classless society, the young join the Communist Party.They carry out all the orders of the Party bosses believing that they know best how to achieve these noble ends.In their middle age they find- too late-that what they had been called upon to do, including all that dirty work, led only to th self-aggrandizement of those Party bosses.The misled youth then realize that they have immolated themselves for and before false Gods. They then try escape from the coils of the Party and hide themselves.But the Party would somehow find them and eliminate them for they know too much, know all that the Party bosses had been up to. That is terrifying. Serge's description of the siege of Leningrad is graphic. But his delineation of the siege of Berlin is not as touching as in "The Berlin Diary" or Zusak's "The Book Thief". Serge sets out quite at length the reflections of the disaffected early enthusiasts on the 'betrayal' of the noble ideals by the Party leaders. These interfere with the flow of an otherwise tense story.On the whole a stimulating novel.

This Book will Stick with You by RussianReader

5 Stars
January 30, 2009
"Brutal" is the word that comes to mind after reading this book. If anyone has doubts about the atrocities of history they only need to read this book. The brutality of war is laid bare in Serge's masterful writing. For those interested in reading this novel I would only warn that it will stick with you for a long while.

READ THIS by E. L. Fay (New York)

5 Stars
January 24, 2009
Victor Serge was the pen name of Victor Lvovich Kibalchich, born in 1890 in Brussels to impoverished anti-Czarist Russian exiles. After being expelled from Belgium for anarchist activities, he became a journalist in Paris, publishing articles for radical papers before being imprisoned in 1912 on charges of terrorism. He traveled to Spain in 1917 and participated in an attempted syndicalist uprising. By the time he finally arrived in Russia in 1919, Serge had become disenchanted with anarchism and joined the Bolsheviks. At one point, he briefly withdrew to lead a commune on an abandoned estate near Petrograd. After that failed, he went on a 1922 Comintern mission to Germany, which restored his battered pride in Russia's accomplishments. Yet he still had serious issues with the Comintern, and subsequently joined Leon Trotsky's anti-Stalinist United Opposition in 1923, which resulted in his expulsion from the Communist Party and imprisonment in 1928. Upon his release, he published three novels in Paris, only to be arrested again in Russia in 1933. He was allowed to leave in 1936 only after international protests from other prominent radicals. Now living in France, he corresponded with other anti-Stalinists, including Trotsky, and began publishing heated exposés on Stalin's regime. After Germany's invasion in 1940, he fled with his son to Mexico. He wrote two novels during this time, "The Case of Comrade Tulayev" and "Unforgiving Years," as well as "Memoirs of a Revolutionary." His years of imprisonment had damaged his health, however, and the several assassination attempts by Mexican Stalinists didn't exactly help. Broke and harassed Soviet agents, Victor Serge died in 1947 in Mexico City of a heart attack. Wow. While no author's works exist in a vacuum, it is especially vital to know who Victor Serge was before commencing his masterpiece novel, "Unforgiving Years," first published in Paris in 1971 and only finally translated to English in 2008. Seriously, I cannot praise this book enough. It is epic in every last sense of the word. Serge's sweeping story is divided into four parts, the first three, like the panels in a Hieronymus Bosch triptych, altogether composing a panoramic view of the "disastrous, blazing core of the twentieth century" (publisher's copy - I couldn't have said it better myself). The overall plot centers on two Russian comrades named D and Daria, yet the true subject is the madness, destruction, and ultimate disillusionment of Europe in the 1930s and '40s. Please, I beg you, read this. If you never read anything else this year, read this. Serge, lifelong revolutionary, captures both the zeal of the true believer and the hollowness of the political apostate in dark, dense prose reminiscent of Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness." Like Conrad, Serge delves deep into the human psyche, confronts head-on the brutality that lives there, and takes the reader on a corresponding physical journey through a threatening landscape that mirrors the chaos within. In other words, "Unforgiving Years" is NOT an uplifting book. It is bitter in tone and prone to lyrical flights of surrealism. Throughout, Serge emphasizes revolutionary fanaticism and world-weary disillusionment as only one who has experienced them possibly can. He writes with a fully authentic voice that effectively explores the full range of human emotions under conditions wholly foreign to the average American reader, today and yesterday: his characters persist through war, poverty, prison, undercover behind enemy lines, and on the run from Communist militants. (In his book "For the Soul of Mankind," when talking about the American home front in World War II, Melvin P. Leffler notes that never has there been so much talk about sacrifice, yet so little *actual sacrifice* when compared to everyone else.) Again, it is not a pleasant tale, but it is an important one, for it is, above all, an eloquent testimony to both the perils of political fanaticism and the dark rivers of the human heart. So, needless to say, "Unforgiving Years" comes highly recommended. It is well-written and evocative; educational and instructive without being pedagogical. It is a work of art composed by someone who lived a turbulent life intrinsically bound to history's most tumultuous era.

Endgame by Keith A. Comess

4 Stars
January 07, 2009
In general, I agree with the plaudits given this book. NYRB deserves much credit in not only resurrecting it, but finally translating it to English (from French). As already discussed, this book is divided into four complementary sections. There are many "big ideas" which were sometimes presented in monologues and often during the course of tedious dialogue: these latter were occasionally lofted into vaguely pretentious displays of erudition by the characters. However, recall that most of the early revolutionists were self-absorbed intellectuals often presented themselves in this way. As an historical source on the Revolution, the book fails, however, historical representation was not Serge's goal. The first section, dealing with the defection of Sacha ("D") introduces the characters and explains the "secret agent's" abandonment of the Revolution. However, it is not an analysis of "true believer" psychology like Koestler's, "Darkness at Noon" (or, for that matter, Eric Hoffer's, "The True Believer"). The second section, dealing with the personal experiences of Daria, a Communist functionary, during the Seige of Leningrad, was the weakest, as the characters appeared to be archetypes with whom it was difficult to establish sympathy. The third section, dealing with the end-stage of the War in Germany appears to owe a debt to Celine ("North", in particular). Again, Daria plays a dedicated role. The ultimate reason for her abandonment of the cause as presented in the final section was not given. The fourth section of the book, set in Mexico, was most beautifully written. The style evokes Paul Bowles, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Malcolm Lowry, though I suspect this work was unknown to them. In summary, this is an excellent novel, one deserving attention by anyone who appreciates real artistic endeavors. The fact that Serge could write this under conditions of privation and exile and near the end of his life adds even more testament to his brilliance.

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