With Trotsky In Exile: From Prinkipo To Coyoacán
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
One of the most intimate firsthand accounts of a revolutionary in flight, With Trotsky in Exile: From Prinkipo to Coyoacán chronicles seven tumultuous years in the company of Leon Trotsky, the exiled architect of the Russian Revolution, as seen through the sharp, discerning eyes of his trusted secretary and bodyguard. Jean van Heijenoort — mathematician, philosopher, and devoted Trotskyist — traces his subject's restless journey from the remote Turkish island of Prinkipo, through the political labyrinths of France and Norway, to the fortified villa in Coyoacán, Mexico, where Trotsky's life would ultimately end at the hands of a Stalinist assassin in 1940. Van Heijenoort writes with the rare authority of a witness who was both intimately close to his subject and intellectually equipped to assess him with rigour and nuance. The narrative illuminates the inner workings of Trotsky's household, the paranoid atmosphere of exile politics, and the unrelenting persecution orchestrated by Stalin's GPU — painting a portrait of a man of towering intellect living under a perpetual death sentence. For readers drawn to the great ideological dramas of the twentieth century, this memoir raises a haunting question: what does proximity to genius — and to history — ultimately cost the witness who survives?
Author: Jean Van Heijenoort
Format: Hardback
Published: 1978, Harvard University Press
Genre: Biography
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
One of the most intimate firsthand accounts of a revolutionary in flight, With Trotsky in Exile: From Prinkipo to Coyoacán chronicles seven tumultuous years in the company of Leon Trotsky, the exiled architect of the Russian Revolution, as seen through the sharp, discerning eyes of his trusted secretary and bodyguard. Jean van Heijenoort — mathematician, philosopher, and devoted Trotskyist — traces his subject's restless journey from the remote Turkish island of Prinkipo, through the political labyrinths of France and Norway, to the fortified villa in Coyoacán, Mexico, where Trotsky's life would ultimately end at the hands of a Stalinist assassin in 1940. Van Heijenoort writes with the rare authority of a witness who was both intimately close to his subject and intellectually equipped to assess him with rigour and nuance. The narrative illuminates the inner workings of Trotsky's household, the paranoid atmosphere of exile politics, and the unrelenting persecution orchestrated by Stalin's GPU — painting a portrait of a man of towering intellect living under a perpetual death sentence. For readers drawn to the great ideological dramas of the twentieth century, this memoir raises a haunting question: what does proximity to genius — and to history — ultimately cost the witness who survives?