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bleuennreads_'s review against another edition
dark
informative
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
chairmanbernanke's review against another edition
3.0
Historically significant and apparently influential, but not with especially compelling or developed characters.
seeceeread's review
3.0
๐ญ "I hate memories, as a rule. And I seldom have any: my life is not in the past, it's before me."
A ragtag band tries (and fails) to replace their government. There's a loose plot: Intrigues with daggers and grenades, a scheme to commandeer a shipment of arms, and another to assassinate Chiang Kai-Shek, the chairman of the Kuomintang ... But the book moreso captures the tension of guerilla action in a city where many powerbrokers languidly make their way through the days: gambling, planning to protect French financial institutions, ignoring a lover's dignity.
Malraux has our characters frequently muse over grand questions, so this is replete with philosophical ditties:
โข In Marxism there is a sense of fatality, and also the exaltation of will. Every time fatality comes before will I'm suspicious.
โข One can always find terror in himself. One only needs to look deep enough: fortunately one can act.
โข You know a good many things, dear, but you will probably die without its ever having occurred to you that a woman is ๐ข๐ญ๐ด๐ฐ a human being.
This reads almost like a play, in that it's heavy on dialogue ... but the speaker is often obscured, which is disorienting. Paragraph breaks and quotes don't follow a familiar pattern, especially because Malraux writes internal thoughts in the same style as spoken words. And an omniscient narrator jumps perspectives seemingly randomly; we learn of a French elite, a handful of passionate revolutionaries, a few women who deign to engage men obsessed with themselves, possessions and conquest; an aging, opium-loving professor ...
There's a lot about lust, death and control as essential to men's self-realization. Generally, this has the same hazy, atmospheric tone that I have come to expect from books about war (or the like) by men โ and it fits with titles like ๐๐ป๐๐ผ ๐ฎ ๐๐น๐ฎ๐ฐ๐ธ ๐ฆ๐๐ป x Kaikล and ๐ง๐ต๐ฒ ๐ง๐ต๐ถ๐ป๐ด๐ ๐ง๐ต๐ฒ๐ ๐๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ฟ๐ถ๐ฒ๐ฑ x O'Brien.
A ragtag band tries (and fails) to replace their government. There's a loose plot: Intrigues with daggers and grenades, a scheme to commandeer a shipment of arms, and another to assassinate Chiang Kai-Shek, the chairman of the Kuomintang ... But the book moreso captures the tension of guerilla action in a city where many powerbrokers languidly make their way through the days: gambling, planning to protect French financial institutions, ignoring a lover's dignity.
Malraux has our characters frequently muse over grand questions, so this is replete with philosophical ditties:
โข In Marxism there is a sense of fatality, and also the exaltation of will. Every time fatality comes before will I'm suspicious.
โข One can always find terror in himself. One only needs to look deep enough: fortunately one can act.
โข You know a good many things, dear, but you will probably die without its ever having occurred to you that a woman is ๐ข๐ญ๐ด๐ฐ a human being.
This reads almost like a play, in that it's heavy on dialogue ... but the speaker is often obscured, which is disorienting. Paragraph breaks and quotes don't follow a familiar pattern, especially because Malraux writes internal thoughts in the same style as spoken words. And an omniscient narrator jumps perspectives seemingly randomly; we learn of a French elite, a handful of passionate revolutionaries, a few women who deign to engage men obsessed with themselves, possessions and conquest; an aging, opium-loving professor ...
There's a lot about lust, death and control as essential to men's self-realization. Generally, this has the same hazy, atmospheric tone that I have come to expect from books about war (or the like) by men โ and it fits with titles like ๐๐ป๐๐ผ ๐ฎ ๐๐น๐ฎ๐ฐ๐ธ ๐ฆ๐๐ป x Kaikล and ๐ง๐ต๐ฒ ๐ง๐ต๐ถ๐ป๐ด๐ ๐ง๐ต๐ฒ๐ ๐๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ฟ๐ถ๐ฒ๐ฑ x O'Brien.
monkey3's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.0
eclark93's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
mark_lm's review
4.0
The novel is the story of the 1927 Shanghai massacre as experienced by several fictional characters representing various points of view including Chinese and Russian Communists, terrorists, Western businessmen and dilettantes, and members of the factions of the Kuomintang. In addition to the multiway political strife, there is personal animosity, philosophical existential angst and betrayal. Malraux was an interesting character himself, perhaps somewhat of a self-invented con man (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/10/books/review/malraux-one-mans-fate.html), but I don't think any less of the novel for that - after all, he did write it.
Ultimately, I found the story moving (Nabokov apparently ridiculed it as melodramatic), but the text was sometimes awkward and difficult to read. It won the Prix Goncourt in 1933 and I suspect that the problem is with the translation. There is another English translation by Alastair MacDonald; it is out of print, but I recommend looking for it.
----------
Randomly chosen examples of these not infrequent difficulties are:
"If you don't have confidence in the International, mustn't belong to the Party." [Is there a word missing here?]
" 'Yes, Gisors, Kyoshi.(1)'
1. Kyo is an abbreviation." [Is abbreviation the correct English word to mean nickname?]
---------
And...a favorite quote that might be useful in the future:
"When you're through prostituting yourselves to the State, you take your cowardice for wisdom, and believe that to be a Venus de Milo all you need is to be armless..."
Ultimately, I found the story moving (Nabokov apparently ridiculed it as melodramatic), but the text was sometimes awkward and difficult to read. It won the Prix Goncourt in 1933 and I suspect that the problem is with the translation. There is another English translation by Alastair MacDonald; it is out of print, but I recommend looking for it.
----------
Randomly chosen examples of these not infrequent difficulties are:
"If you don't have confidence in the International, mustn't belong to the Party." [Is there a word missing here?]
" 'Yes, Gisors, Kyoshi.(1)'
1. Kyo is an abbreviation." [Is abbreviation the correct English word to mean nickname?]
---------
And...a favorite quote that might be useful in the future:
"When you're through prostituting yourselves to the State, you take your cowardice for wisdom, and believe that to be a Venus de Milo all you need is to be armless..."
megapolisomancy's review
1.0
This did nothing to grab me in the first 40 pages or so and there are too many other things I'm dying to read to persevere through what appears to be an overwrought tragically existential piece of work.
kingfan30's review
2.0
This started out quite promising, the thoughts of a man about to kill someone, I was intreaged to see if he would go ahead or not. But after that the story lost it for me, I could not connect with the characters and found my mind drifting constantly. Just not my sort of book I'm afraid.
natemanfrenjensen's review
5.0
One of very few books I have ever finished and immediately wanted to start again.