Last Times
Published on 23. August 2022
416 pages
978-1-68137-515-1 (ISBN)
Description
A story of displacement and resistance during the early days of the Nazi occupation of France.
Last Times, Victor Serge's epic novel of the Fall of France is based--like much of his fiction--on first-hand experience. The author was an eyewitness to the last days of Paris (June 1940) and joined the chaotic mass exodus south to the unoccupied zone on foot with nothing but his manuscripts. He found himself trapped in Marseille under the Vichy government, a persecuted, stateless Russian, and participated in the early French Resistance before escaping on the last ship to the Americas in 1941.
Exiled in Mexico City, Serge poured his recent experience into a fast-moving, gripping novel aimed at an American audience, and it was published in New York in 1946. Along with sharply drawn characters, dramatic scenes, and physical action, the novel presents a compelling evocation of the atmosphere of that time and place, based on keen observation and an enormous talent for description. It's a near-forgotten classic of the era.
Serge creates a haunting panorama of a near-deserted Paris abandoned by the government. The reader follows his protagonists, anti-fascist refugees, through the last days of Europe's deserted cultural capital as the sound of gunfire moves into the suburbs. With them, the reader joins the flood of Belgian and French refugees fleeing south on foot, in cars loaded with household goods, on bikes, pushing carts and prams under the strafing Stukas.
Serge next brings to life wartime Marseille, its great harbor closed by the war, with its undergrounds, rackets and prostitution, its Vichy officialdom and fascist Militias, its collaborationists, its early resisters, its crowds of desperate refugees competing for the last visa and the last berth on the last--hoped-for--ship to the new world.
Last Times, Victor Serge's epic novel of the Fall of France is based--like much of his fiction--on first-hand experience. The author was an eyewitness to the last days of Paris (June 1940) and joined the chaotic mass exodus south to the unoccupied zone on foot with nothing but his manuscripts. He found himself trapped in Marseille under the Vichy government, a persecuted, stateless Russian, and participated in the early French Resistance before escaping on the last ship to the Americas in 1941.
Exiled in Mexico City, Serge poured his recent experience into a fast-moving, gripping novel aimed at an American audience, and it was published in New York in 1946. Along with sharply drawn characters, dramatic scenes, and physical action, the novel presents a compelling evocation of the atmosphere of that time and place, based on keen observation and an enormous talent for description. It's a near-forgotten classic of the era.
Serge creates a haunting panorama of a near-deserted Paris abandoned by the government. The reader follows his protagonists, anti-fascist refugees, through the last days of Europe's deserted cultural capital as the sound of gunfire moves into the suburbs. With them, the reader joins the flood of Belgian and French refugees fleeing south on foot, in cars loaded with household goods, on bikes, pushing carts and prams under the strafing Stukas.
Serge next brings to life wartime Marseille, its great harbor closed by the war, with its undergrounds, rackets and prostitution, its Vichy officialdom and fascist Militias, its collaborationists, its early resisters, its crowds of desperate refugees competing for the last visa and the last berth on the last--hoped-for--ship to the new world.
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Victor Serge | Ralph Manheim
Last Times
Book
08/2022
New York Review Books
€22.50
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Persons
Victor Serge (1890-1947) was a revolutionary Marxist and a writer of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Among his works available in English are the novels The Case of Comrade Tulayev, Unforgiving Years, Conquered City, and Midnight in the Century; an autobiography, Memoirs of a Revolutionary; and a collection of journal entries, Notebooks: 1936-1947 (all available as NYRB Classics).
Ralph Manheim (1907-1992) was the translator of more than one hundred books. After Manheim's death, the PEN Medal for Translation, which he won in 1988, was renamed in his memory.
Richard Greeman has translated and written the introductions for five of Victor Serge's novels. He splits his time between Montpellier, France, and New York City.
Ralph Manheim (1907-1992) was the translator of more than one hundred books. After Manheim's death, the PEN Medal for Translation, which he won in 1988, was renamed in his memory.
Richard Greeman has translated and written the introductions for five of Victor Serge's novels. He splits his time between Montpellier, France, and New York City.
