Cold Warriors

July 1, 2019
During the Cold War, on both sides of the Iron Curtain, writers were warriors, literature a weapon. Daily Telegraph book reviewer White (History and Literature/Harvard Univ.; Nabokov and His Books, 2017, etc.) returns with a massive, thoroughly researched history of the roles of writers and literature during the Cold War. His focus is not just on the United States and the Soviet Union; he also tells stories about Western Europe and Latin America (there is a chapter on Nicaragua, the Contras, and Ronald Reagan). Many celebrated writers glimmer in these pages, including George Orwell, Arthur Koestler, Stephen Spender, Isaac Babel, Mary McCarthy, Graham Greene, John le Carré, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and Ernest Hemingway. Names probably less familiar to general readers are the Soviet writers Anna Akhmatova and Andrei Sinyavsky. The narrative is mostly chronological, and White shifts focus, chapter by chapter, to various writers and the political realities that they had to face--and endure. He also shows how governments tried to influence (or silence) their own writers and how they tried to use literature both as a weapon and a shield. "The issue of complicity is at the center of this book," he writes. "Every writer in these pages had to grapple with it in one form or another--such was the price to be paid for writing at a time when, to paraphrase historian Giles Scott-Smith, to be apolitical was itself a form of politics." White delivers tales of astonishing courage--e.g., the Czech playwright Václav Havel emerging from persecution and prosecution to become his country's president, Solzhenitsyn sticking firmly to his determination to tell his stories--and of duplicity and betrayal: The story of Kim Philby, the English traitor, is prominent. Many readers will be surprised by the connections among these writers, which White ably highlights: Orwell and Hemingway, Koestler and McCarthy, and so many others. The author also occasionally summarizes now-classic literary works (Animal Farm). Both profound and profoundly important and as engaging as a gripping Cold War thriller.

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June 28, 2019

During the Cold War both the United States and the Soviet Union believed that literature had a meaningful influence on its readers, making it an ideal tool for propaganda. As such, controlling literary output became a priority for both countries and a means to amplify support and silence dissent. White (Assistant Director of Studies in History & Literature, Harvard Univ.; Vladimir Nabokov) chronicles the resources and methods used by both nations and the effects they had on writers and the books they wrote. From the Spanish Civil War to the war in Vietnam, White covers several decades and focuses on more than a dozen authors. As is the risk with any book trying to cover so much, Cold Warriors as a whole is uneven. It is at its strongest when charting the shifting communist sympathies of George Orwell, Arthur Koestler, Mary McCarthy, and others, but what connects all the authors mentioned is primarily that they were writing during the Cold War. Alone that is not enough to satisfyingly carry the narrative. VERDICT At times riveting and insightful, this book will appeal to readers of Cold War history and readers of espionage thrillers. However, because of its expansive scope, it is difficult to recommend to general readers.--Timothy Berge, West Virginia Univ., Morgantown

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from August 1, 2019
In 1948, when Arthur Koestler tried to punch Jean-Paul Sartre in a Paris bar but ended up blackening the eye of Albert Camus instead, bystanders saw only a scuffle between angry men. White, however, recognizes a skirmish in an ideological war pitting authors defending democratic capitalism against writers supporting Soviet communism. From this painstakingly researched narrative, readers will learn about how George Orwell, Stephen Spender, Mary McCarthy, Graham Greene, Andrei Sinyavsky, and many others (including Koestler and Sartre) deployed their skills on the Cold War's most hotly contested literary battlefields. Readers see how Orwell distilled his hard-won insights into Soviet perfidy into the pellucid fable Animal Farm, how McCarthy was launched on an ideological crusade by a single question from James Farrell, how Sinyavsky inspired an unprecedented public protest in Moscow by defying Soviet censors in the name of literary autonomy. White illuminates the precarious place of literature in a world swarming with spies eager to manipulate?even to enlist?authors to advance their shadowy agendas. Readers witness the ruthless brutality of Soviet authorities imprisoning and executing dissident writers, but they also penetrate the deceptions of American and British intelligence agencies playing authors as pawns. A compelling reminder of literature's influence?and vulnerability?in a world of power politics.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)