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The infernal library : on dictators, the books they wrote, and other catastrophes of literacy
- Author
- Kalder, Daniel, 1974- author.
- Title
- The infernal library : on dictators, the books they wrote, and other catastrophes of literacy / Daniel Kalder.
- Format
- Book
- Edition
- First edition.
- Published
- New York : Henry Holt and Company, 2018. ©2018
- Description
- xvi, 379 pages : illustrations, portraits ; 25 cm
- Notes
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 355-364) and index.
- Contents
-
- Introduction: Tradition and the individual tyrant
- Phase I: The dictator's canon
- Lenin
- Stalin
- Mussolini
- Hitler
- Mao
- Phase II: Tyranny and mutation
- Small demons
- Catholic action
- Disembraining machines
- Eastern approaches
- Dead letters
- Another green world
- Phase III: Dissolution and madness
- Midnight in the garden of ultraboredom
- North Korea: the metafictions of Kim Jong-il
- Cuba: Castro's maximum verbiage
- Iraq: the historical romances of Saddam Hussein
- Post-Soviet: Comrade Zoroaster
- Turkmenistan: post-everything
- Phase IV: Death is not the end
- Conclusion.
- Summary
- "A harrowing tour of 'dictator literature' in the twentieth-century, featuring the soul-killing prose and poetry of Hitler, Mao, and many more, which shows how books have sometimes shaped the world for the worse."--Jacket.
- Subject headings
- Dictators as authors--History. Revolutionary literature--Authorship. Dictatorships History.
- ISBN
- 9781627793421 (hardcover) 1627793429 (hardcover) 9781627793438 (electronic book)