Cheap Man's Hope (Book) (ANDRE MALRAUX) Price

Related Products

Customer Reviews of Man's Hope

The shattering novel of a shattered world
It seems to me that the Spanish Civil War is a period that is lost for most of us today. Very few of us lived through it and overshadowed as it was by other events soon afterwards, the passions it aroused, though virulent and enduring in both art and literature, have become dimmed over time. I imagine that in the generation under thirty-five today, those who have the vaguest notion of what took place then, would hardly form a legion. Of course, it is better known that a number of major figures from the literary and artistic world of the twenties went to fight (some on either side) in Spain. It is also probably well known that the Germans, Russians and Italians all sent troops or technical specialists to sharpen their own wares for the conflict to which this one proved but a prelude. Yet the extraordinary passions that were aroused in Spain and that reached out and infected so many of the foreign volunteers, have to be experienced by individuals and perhaps the best way I know of coming close to the tremulous heart of that ugly story is through Malraux. The book has been written as fiction by a master storyteller. The action, all of which is real and much of which was witnessed at first hand, is simply gripping. The tears it should properly evoke will also, I have no doubt, be real ones. In a way, Malraux, who also wrote a similar and equally fine book about revolution in China, is offering us a lament for all that died in those years, for crushed spirits and youth spent as fodder for cannons. It is a magnificent human story; regrettably it is one of tragedy. But if we are to remember the Holocaust of the Nazis, why should we forget the deadly internecine warfare of Spain? Indeed, how could we.

This review concerns the translation by Stuart Gilbert and Alastair Macdonald, which was excellent. Once again, there are so many books in the world, I know, but this one should not be out of print.