The Great Prince Died: A Novel about the Assassination of Trotsky

On August 20, 1940, Marxist philosopher, politician, and revolutionary Leon Trotsky was attacked with an ice axe in his home in Coyoac n, Mexico. He died the next day.

In The Great Prince Died, Bernard Wolfe offers his lyrical, fictionalized account of Trotsky's assassination as witnessed through the eyes of an array of characters: the young American student helping to translate the exiled Trotsky's work (and to guard him), the Mexican police chief, a Rumanian revolutionary, the assassin and his handlers, a poor Mexican "pe n," and Trotsky himself. Drawing on his own experiences working as the exiled Trotsky's secretary and bodyguard and mixing in digressions on Mexican culture, Stalinist tactics, and Bolshevik history, Wolfe interweaves fantasy and fact, delusion and journalistic reporting to create one of the great political novels of the past century.

Author: Bernard Wolfe
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 09/14/2015
Pages: 416
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.25lbs
Size: 8.98h x 6.07w x 0.64d
ISBN: 9780226260648

About the Author
Bernard Wolfe (1915-85) was an American writer whose interests stretched from cybernetics to politics. He was the author of many books, including Limbo and The Late Risers, and coauthor of Mezz Mezzrow s classic memoir, Really the Blues."