Out of the Night - Couverture rigide

Valtin, Jan

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 1870958039 ISBN 13 : 9781870958035

Editeur : Fortress Books, 1988

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur

Jan Valtin came of age as a bicycle messenger during a Communist uprising on the German Baltic coast just after the end of World War I. His life is an intimate insider's account of the dramatic events of the 1920s and 1930s, where he rose both within the ranks of the Communist Party and on the Gestapo hit list. As eventual head of the Party's maritime organising, he crossed Europe and the globe - professional revolutionary, agitator, spy, and assassin - including America, where a botched 'hit' on Party orders landed him three years in San Quentin. Captured by the Gestapo, he endured years in a concentration camp, engineering his release by convincing his captors he could work as a double agent. Narrowly escaping the murderous clutches of Stalin's thugs, who brooked no deviation from the Party line, he eventually washed up in America, where he wrote this memoir - an unlikely bestseller that sold over a million copies in 1941. A brilliant, humble account of a young life filled with idealism and devotion, disillusionment and loss, in a world full of revolutionary promise and totalitarian reaction. Selected as a Book Of The Month Club, they described it as "...full of sensational revelations and interspersed with episodes of daring, of desperate conflict, of torture, and of ruthless conspiracy... It is, first of all, an autobiography the like of which has seldom been."

Revue de presse

An exciting, real book without a trace of unnecessary melodrama. --H.G. Wells

This is a historical document of the first rank, a biography, an adventure story, and in places, so it seems, a brisk novel. It is all these in one, and in addition the writing and structure are excellent. Before you start to read it you had better plan to take three days off. Its suspense is such that you will not be good for anything else until you have turned the last page. And then you will need time to think and to remember...Out of the Night will be misused in many quarters. The red-baiters will eat it up, but that will matter little so long as it is read widely. The fighters of the future will learn from this work many of the fallacies which they will have to avoid. Jan Valtin, after grave errors, has at last made his contribution to the cause of the oppressed, and with more than good measure. --Franz Hollering, The Nation, Jan 18, 1941

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Fortress Books
• Date d'édition: 1988
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1870958039
• ISBN 13: 9781870958035
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 688
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible