* Description
* "Mi�ville is an ideal guide through this complex historical moment, giving agency to obscure and better-known
participants alike, and depicting the revolution as both a tragically lost rtunity and an ongoing source of
inspiration."
--Publishers Weekly (Starred Review--"Best Summer Books of 2017" & "Best Books 2017")
"When one of the most marvellously original writers in the world takes on one of the most explosive events in history,
the result can only be incendiary."
--Barbara Ehrenreich
"To give a new generation of readers a fresh account of the great revolution, incorporating all the post-1989 archival
discoveries and scholarly research, is a singularly daunting task. To render it in vivid, oracular prose, moving across
the pages with the gathering force of a hurricane, is something that only China Mi�ville could achieve."
--Mike Davis
"Mi�ville sifts through the extraordinary disagreements, debates, and debacles that accompanied the Russian reds on
every step of the road to revolution ... He's especially evocative when he chronicles the scenes on the chaotic streets.
But much of the value of October comes in his mastery of how the intricacies of human decision-making play out in
Petrograd, Moscow, and beyond."
--Christian Science Monitor
"Elegantly constructed and unexpectedly moving."
--Sheila Fitzpatrick, London Review of Books
"Engaging retelling of the events that rocked the foundations of the twentieth century."
--Village Voice
"China Mi�ville's literary retelling--made to feel like a novel, but scrupulously sourced to real events--captures the
of 1917's encounter between massive historical forces, plunging us back into the heart of a far-reaching social
upheaval, in which time flowed backward and forward even as it marched inexorably forward toward a future that was
radically unknown."
--David Sessions, New Republic
"This is a very fine book -- in some ways, I believe, the best work that China Mi�ville has produced since the three
thick volumes of the Bas-Lag trilogy. Indeed, October bears, in certain respects, a deeper affinity to those novels than
to anything else he has published since; and it thus provides a convenient rtunity to take stock of the Mi�ville
oeuvre to date...That [October] is an excellent work of art there is no doubt whatever."
--Carl Freedman, Los Angeles Review of Books
"There are workers, there are peasants, there are soldiers, there are parties, there are tsars, there are courtiers.
Each of them bears his or her class position, his or her economic and other concerns, but it is the political field
itself, how it hurls its protagonists into combat, combat with its own rules and norms, its own criteria for success and
failure, that is front and center here. This may be the most textured, most concrete, account of what political contest
and political combat, literal and metaphoric, feels like."
--Corey Robin
"Provides an introduction to one of the seminal events of the 20th century--the overthrow of the Romanov dynasty and
the establishment of the world's first communist state 100 years ago this year ... It has all the makings of a novel,
and Mi�ville's narrative builds toward its crescendo as the Bolsheviks prepare to take power."
--Boston Globe
"There are delightful grace notes here over and above a brisk and perceptive narrative."
--Stuart Kelly, Scotsman
"This gripping account is a re-enactment of the Russian Revolution ... His writing can be as passionate as that of the
poets of the time: Alexander Blok, Mikhail Kuzmin, Marina Tsvetaeva, to mention some of those quoted here. Mi�ville's
own special effects are of a piece with them."
--Financial Times
"Cinematic and vivid."
--Newsweek
"Even though you know the ending, this is a compulsive page-turner that makes the period come alive in rich, colourful
detail. Although he is better known for his science fiction, Mi�ville's eye here es out both the spirit of
revolution and the horrors that followed. His feelings are evidently complex, which leads to a narrative that draws out
elements often left out of more traditional renderings of the Revolution."
--Caroline Magennis, Times Higher Education
"The story is old but Mi�ville retells it with verve and empathy. He brilliantly captures the tensions of coup and
counter-coup and the kaleido of coalitions that formed and then broke."
--Guardian
"An inspirational account that lends itself to troubled times."
--Observer
An exciting account of the revolutionary moment ... well-argued and elegiac."
--Spectator
"An intriguing march to revolution, told here with clarity and in."
--Kirkus
"Readers will be satisfied that October gives them the literary equivalent of bearing witness to world history."
--Booklist
"It's as if John Reed, author of the classic piece of revolutionary journalism, Ten Days That Shook the World, woke from
a decades-long to tell the story of 1917 once again."
--Counterpunch
"October, by the British author China Mi�ville, is a gripping account of the Russian Revolution that offers the
pleasures and rewards of a great novel ... The book has vividly drawn characters, high drama, suspense, and an
irresistible narrative momentum that sweeps the reader along from the first page to the tragic--but not
inevitable--conclusion ... a masterful work."
--George de Stefano, Pop Matters
"Mi�ville's understanding of the intricacies and underlying absurdities of party politics is unmatched ... A rich and
compelling book."
--Dallas Morning News
"Mi�ville, known for his extravagantly weird science fiction and fantasy, is a virtuosic storyteller; here he conjures
a society convulsing on the verge of total transformation while staying squarely within the lines of the historical
record. Reading this blow-by-blow account of revolution now, when political life is stranger than any fiction, is
galvanizing."
--Artsy
"Mi�ville's account of the events of 1917 in Petrograd is fast-paced, well-written, and eminently readable. In
Mi�ville's telling the Russian revolution of exactly a century ago comes alive. This is the book's primary
accomplishement: to recreate the atmosphere of the time trhough a dramatic retelling of some of the events."
--Grover Furr, Som and Democracy
"China Mi�ville's October writes an accurate history of the Russian Revolution almost as if it was science fiction--like
an alternate history that actually happened, which is how it strikes us now--and achieves a vivid depiction of a
gigantic social upheaval without losing of agency and decision at every level of the process."
--Ken MacLeodNumber of Pages: 384
Genre: History
Sub-Genre: Russia & the Former Soviet Union
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Verso
Author: China Mieville
Language: English
Estimated shipping dimensions: 6.3INCH X 9.4INCH X 1.0INCH
DPCI : 248-27-9996
UPC : 9781784782771
TCIN : 51631080
Estimated shippimg weight: 1.5POUND
