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Man's Fate (La Condition Humaine)
by Andre Malraux
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Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Haakon M. Chevalier
ISBN13: 9780679725749
Condition: NEW
Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
As explosive and immediate today as when it was originally published in 1933, Man's Fate (La Condition Humaine), an account of a crucial episode in the early days of the Chinese Revolution, foreshadows the contemporary world and brings to life the profound meaning of the revolutionary impulse for the individuals involved. As a study of conspiracy and conspirators, of men caught in the desperate clash of ideologies, betrayal, expediency, and free will, Andre Malraux's novel remains unequaled.Translated from the French by Haakon M. Chevalier
Man's Fate was first published in 1933. As a fictional account of the early days of the Chinese Revolution, this novel remains a powerful expression of psychological insight into the spirit of political revolution. From the opening scene, in which Chinese terrorist Ch'en Ta Erh struggles internally over his task of assassinating a sleeping man, Malraux combines gritty action with an elaboration of the existential principle that social change is powered by the actions of individuals.
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| A SAGA OF THE SECOND CHINESE REVOLUTION |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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As a young man in the late 1920's many held out high hopes that the French writer Andre Malraux would become an accomplished revolutionary writer, or at least an extraordinary writer of revolutionary sagas. No less a communist literary critic than Leon Trotsky, the consummate man of action and letters, praised his early work. Man's Fate is a prime example of the reason that leftist critics praised his work. Although later events would destroy his reputation as a writer and as a man of action on the left this novel takes its place in the pantheon of well written expressions of the dilemma of modern humankind confronted as it is with one half of itself mired in the mundane bourgeois (and in this case also feudal) world and the other half striving toward a more just and equitable society.
The action of the novel takes place in the throes of the Second Chinese Revolution at a point where the alliance between Chiang Kai-Shek's Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party had broken down and Chaing was ready to butcher the Communists in order to take undisputed control of the Chinese state. Like Russia before it, everyone had known that a second Chinese Revolution was coming. The only question at that point was whether it was to be a bourgeois revolution in the classic Western sense or a socialist revolution that would go a long way to helping the Soviet Union of the 1920's break out of its isolation after various unsuccessful revolutionary attempts in the West had failed. As it turned out neither event occurred at that time. This tension, and especially the tension of the Communists who were under orders from the Communist International, and hence Moscow, to subordinate themselves to Chiang unconditionally, is what drives the action.
The novel is also a snapshot of what the Communist International's `high policy' looked like as it was implemented on the ground among the secondary cadre and rank and filers of the Chinese Communist Party, their allies, semi-allies, adversaries and the merely indifferent. In addition, it is also an early literary expose of the relationship between those who carry out, even if in small ways, Western imperialist policy in their separate and exclusive colonial enclaves and those `natives' who do the `coolie' work. That tension exists today, as can readily be seen in places like Iraq, so one should pay particular attention to that dynamic. Read on.
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| Hardly worth reading |
| Customer Rating: 2 out of 5 |
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This book read as if the Malraux was going through some sort of teenage life crisis when he wrote it in which he views all of humanity with extreme cynicism. This book really has no hero, and there is something detestable about every character. I realize that some would say that is an accurate reflection of the human condition; and certainly we all do have our own problems. However, the point here is that the negative traits are the salient ones for these characters, which is hardly realistic. As a work of fiction I don't think this book has anything to offer except a deep sense of depression. The writing is not exceptionally good, and Malraux's insight into humanity is base and weak.
Nevertheless, I think this book does earn two stars due to the fact that it fairly accurately covers the issues surrounding one of the most important events in Chinese history: the KMT purge of the Communists in Shanghai in 1927. Malraux does capture the feelings that many Chinese were dealing with, and he makes those feelings apart of his characters. Malraux clearly presents a more favorable view of the Communists in this episode, though he's objective in admitting that they aren't the best people, either.
I would recommend this book to those people who are interested in a fictional, yet historically significant portrayal of this event in Chinese history. You don't need any background knowledge of Chinese history to get through this book, even if you do need a good deal of staying-power due to its ridiculously depressing portrayal of humanity.
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| Less a novel than an explication of adolescent, half-baked ideas |
| Customer Rating: 2 out of 5 |
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Ugh. This novel is just as clumsy as I remember from college.
I like to occasionally re-read books that I read long ago in school. I often find that I was previously too immature to appreciate them, and I find much more that I understand from the perspective of an adult.
This novel let me down badly; it's no better than I remember it.
I have almost the exact same impression now that I had then. It has a gripping beginning -- Chen standing at the foot of the bed of his intended assassination victim, talking himself into striking through the mosquito netting. But after that exciting first scene, the remainder of the book is tedious.
This novel is set in China, during revolutionary battles in the 1920s. What a missed opportunity to set irresistible scenes! How I would have loved to see these cities in my mind, to feel the commotion on their streets, to smell the smells and taste the tastes. But this novel provides almost none of that. These places and people remain lifeless, two-dimensional, little more than vessels for Malraux to impart his philosophies.
The basic message of this book is that "man's fate" is to replay the same violent conflicts again and again, that they signfy nothing other than basic human drives. Ideology and politics are illusions, in Malraux's world. Although his sympathies are with the communists, he doesn't really provide clear reasons for this. Instead, he creates characters to represent different archetypes and to make his points; one has become a revolutionary to seek the dignity denied him by his mixed ethnic background; another is driven by the desire to die a meaningful death; another is cynically interested only in his own profit and then survival. Malraux suggests that these character types will always be with us, enacting the same tragic, violent dramas over and again.
(For what it's worth, I believe Malraux to be wrong in this. One wonders if his world-weary cynicism is a function of his Frenchness, that is his having witnessed the hypocritical, self-serving nature of imperialism, and living with the historical fact that the French Revolution, in contrast with the American, truly was little more than an exchange of one set of authoritarians for another. But Malraux's core beliefs are wrong; the condition of humanity does in fact change; average man can and does conduct himself differently in a modern democracy than he did in Ivan IV's Russia; in our modern world, Malraux's fatalism is worse than merely wrong, it's dangerous.)
If you like novels that serve as forums for fleshing out philosophical or political conceptions, you might enjoy this one. But if you read to experience the pleasure of an author's gift for narration, steer clear.
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| Man's fate |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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I read the "Shanghai station" before and found this book mentioned in the appendix. This is a much better story. Tells very realistic the pre-revolutionary struggle in Shanghai, the conditions under which the local population lives. The state of Shanghai with it's international, foreign, colonial part. The desparation of the people. This book is very fascinating, however paints a somehow somber, depressing picture.
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| Another Great French Novel Mangled by a Bad Translation |
| Customer Rating: 2 out of 5 |
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I am a native French speaker and a professor of French Literature. I love this novel and have a real bone to pick with this 1932 British translation, which refers to the hero-revolutionaries as "terrorists," a word which has come to mean something quite horrendous in America. Malraux's writing style is anything but stiff. It's the translator who chose stiff and stuffy words. Where there seems to be a tone of condescention from the translator, there is none whatsoever in the French. If anything, this is a very fluid novel, based on what Malraux considered an American style of novel writing. Fluid, fast-paced, character-driven. Why is this the only translation available to us in the US? Because the publisher probably didn't have to pay a copywright fee to publish this translation. It's a sin of greed -- how ironic when this novel is basically about that very thing.
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