The Great Prince Died Book Reviews

The Great Prince Died by Bernard Wolfe Book Summary

“Illuminating. . . . No one who reads [this novel] . . . can fail to be gripped by a tale well told. Its message is one the free world will ignore at its peril.” —Selden Rodman, New York Times

On August 20, 1940, Marxist philosopher, politician, and revolutionary Leon Trotsky was attacked with an ice axe in his home in Coyoacán, 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 “peón,” 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.

“Wolfe is a remarkable and essential lost American voice, and Great Prince is one of his finest books.” —Jonathan Lethem, national bestselling author of Fortress of Solitude

“A novel which burns its way into your mind and your memory. If you read it, you will not forget it.” —Newsday

“A hell of a read.” —Larry Grobel, Los Angeles Free Press

“Wolfe has written such convincing fiction that it may be difficult to remember that history may have happened in some other way.” —Maurice Dolbier, New York Herald Tribune

“Powerfully told.” —Robert Kirsch, Los Angeles Times, The Book Report

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