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Sell Us the Rope Spiral-Bound | 2023-03-07

Stephen May

★★★☆☆+ from 101 to 500 ratings

$19.09 - Free Shipping
"Sell Us the Rope is original, adept and confident, with the spry sardonic voice of the new historical fiction: it is entertaining and in the end, deeply moving. What can I say, except that I wish I had written it myself?" --Hilary Mantel

"A deeply satisfying novel. Incisive, inventive, frequently very funny." --The Guardian

In 1907, 27-year-old Stalin is attending the 5th Congress of the Russian Communist Party in a completely immersive, gritty pre-war London. There Koba--as he is known--works with the likes of Lenin, Trotsky, and Rosa Luxemburg, and develops an intense but dangerous relationship with a vivacious FInnish activist name Elli Vuokko.
Navigating between the Tsar's secret police and the Communist Party's suspicions, Stalin forges alliances in the Bolshevik wing of the party while struggling to shake off his impoverished, violent past and to step into a future that will make him one of the world's most infamous dictators.
Called "superb" and "intelligent" by The Financial Times, May's portrait reveals the intense manipulation, the keen ambition, and the daring that reshaped Russia into the Soviet Union, and ultimately remade the world.

Publisher: Macmillan
Original Binding: Trade Paperback
Pages: 240 pages
ISBN-10: 1639731431
Item Weight: 0.5 lbs
Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.7 x 7.7 inches
Customer Reviews: 3 out of 5 stars 101 to 500 ratings
"[A] vivid historical rendering . . . A lively drama of enthusiasm, utopianism, ruthlessness and backstabbing results." --Wall Street Journal

"One of the great attractions of historical fiction is its ability to approach the past from unexpected angles, allowing us to consider famous figures in surprising ways. It's a tactic that pays off brilliantly in Stephen May's elegantly acerbic Sell Us the Rope." --The New York Times

"Gripping . . . [May] combines characters--Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Rosa Luxemburg--who loom so large in history that they are difficult to think of as people at all with others whose stories and voices have been lost. And he crafts a drama both personal and political, a page-turning tale of idealism and intrigue and a cautionary tale of youthful zealotry." --Shelf Awareness

"An oft-sober, occasionally droll portrait of a monster-in-the-making. Impressively, [May] finds a flicker of humanity in a person who became a mass-murdering despot." --Minneapolis Star Tribune

"This inventive literary work . . . daringly tak[es] a darkly comedic approach." --Booklist

"May provides a complex profile of [Stalin] as a young man . . . Evocative and thought-provoking." --Historical Novel Society

"Stellar . . . With a spare, sardonic style, May probes Stalin's childhood trauma, sense of charisma, and brutally violent side, humanizing him without sentimentalizing . . . This is superb." - Publishers Weekly
"The novel exposes the stark contradictions of communism at every turn . . . A subtly menacing portrayal of the future tyrant and mass killer." --Kirkus Reviews

"A riveting portrayal of a young Stalin in London." --Financial Times

"A fascinating and immersive imagining of real events that both challenges and illuminates history." --Benjamin Myers

"Historical facts furnish May with a cast of legends to bring to life, and he does it with verve and humour." --The Times

"A captivating thought-experiment that marks a consolidation of May's powers as a writer." --The Telegraph

"May is superb at summoning the sights and smells of turn of the century London . . . Intelligent and readable." --Financial Times

Stephen May is the author of five novels including Life! Death! Prizes! which was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and The Guardian Not The Booker Prize. He has also been shortlisted for the Wales Book of the Year and is a winner of the Media Wales Reader's Prize. He has also written plays, as well as for television and film. He lives in West Yorkshire.