Commie/Anarcho Novels: search!

The Great Andrei Platonov

"I like Serge, a family friend is an expert on him and has wrote a book on him etc."

Cool, he is a truly interesting figure - almost certainly hunt down his memoirs and a couple of other novels.

Finished The Birth of our Power: the cast of characters, the places and people's minds move like lightning. Good stuff, even if scratchily organized - its v pulpy. Can't see a lefty activist writing with this kind of nervous energy now that's for sure.

I once saw a group of Roombas mounted with speakers & webcams perform a communist play where they revolted and attacked the audience at the end.

I wish I could remember what the play was called, the whole thing was pretty fuckin cool

"Das Karpetal"

I don't know what real "anarchists" would think about it but Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed is a science fiction novel that attempts to imagine a future anarchist utopia/dystopia.

I really like Pa Chin's "The Family", especially in combination with its introduction, written much later, which in essence apologises for not making the capitalist/patriarchal characters one-sided caricatures of eeeeevil.

"I like Serge, a family friend is an expert on him and has wrote a book on him etc."

here's the book:

http://www.amazon.com/Victor-Serge-Course-Set-Hope/dp/1859849873/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238438175&sr=1-2

Check out Moorcock's "Oswald Bastable" trilogy: "Warlord of the Air". "Land Leviathan" and "Steel Tsar" are a loving tribute to Verne and Wells Victorian era SF, though incorporating a thorough critique of their imperialist, racist and authoritarian tendencies, informed by his 60's Ladbroke Grove Anarchist perspective. Best thing he ever wrote IMHO - this is where Steampunk came from, and I've never seen it done any better. Should be a BBC TV series with a Doctor Who-sized budget, but that would need another alternative world.

Moorcock's review of Pynchon's Against the Day appeared in the Daily Telegraph. It's reprinted at MM's official site. TP swiped a lot from MM, though the latter is too generous to carp about it.

I just finished Serge's Unforgiving Years, would definitely recommend it, though it's an awfully punishing book.

It's not a novel but Gustav Regler's The Owl of Minerva is amazing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Star_(novel)

This is a brilliant, thorough piece on Platonov that serves as a guide on what a communist novel/work might mean.

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/our-own-madness-our-own-absurd-andrei-platonov-vladimir-sharov-and-george-bernard-shaw/

You know this one? Amazon pitch is actually pretty accurate re elements, although I haven't read this later translation:
Petersburg Paperback – January 6, 2009
by Andrei Bely (Author), John Elsworth (Translator)

"One of the four most important works of twentieth century literature." - Vladimir Nabokov

Set in the Russian capital during the Revolution of 1905, this modern classic often draws comparisons to James Joyce’s Ulysses for its display of symbolism and humor

After enlisting in a revolutionary terrorist organization, the university student Nikolai Apollonovich Ableukhov is entrusted with a highly dangerous mission: to plant a bomb and assassinate a major government figure.

But the real central character of the novel is the city of Petersburg at the beginning of the twentieth century, caught in the grip of political agitation and social unrest.

Intertwining the worlds of history and myth, and parading a cast of unforgettable characters, Petersburg is a story of apocalypse and redemption played out through family dysfunction, conspiracy and murder.
Winner of the 2009 Rossica Translation Prize
Wiki caveat re editions:
n 1922 Bely published in Berlin a revised edition which was shorter by a third than the first one. As Bely noted, "the new edition is a completely new book for the readers of the first edition". As critics note, in the Berlin version Bely has changed the foot of his rhitmic prose from anapaest to amphibrach and removed ironical passages related to the revolutionary movent. The second version is usually considered as inferior to the first one.[4]
Also I want to read The Silver Dove, which came before this one in his unfinished trilogy, East-West.
Lots of discussions online, though I'm mainly familiar with Marshall Berman's amazing All That Is Solid Melts Into Air, which depicts St. Petersberg as radicalizing many Russian mynds through early ages and stages of what became Revolution (incl. some stuff the Bolsheviks initially endorsed and/or took credit for).

Been a long time, but I also enjoyed the first English (Chevalier) translation of Malraux' La Condition humaine, as Man's Fate, with seemingly astute comments that didn't derail the momentum, actually charged it up even more.

"You know this one?"

Yeah, a long time ago. Can't remember enough about it.

Another thing on Sharov (don't have access for the rest of the review) but I must try him sometime.

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/be-as-children-vladimir-sharov-book-review-muireann-maguire/

Intriguing, thanks!