Mitchell Abidor Victor Serge review, recensie en informatie biografie over de in België geboren Russische schrijver, revolutionair en anarchist. Op 20 november 2025 verschijnt bij Pluto Press de biografie van Victor Serge, Onhandelbare revolutionair. Het boek is geschreven door de Amerikaanse schrijver en vertaler Mitchell Abidor. Een Nederlandse vertaling van het boek is niet verkrijgbaar.

Mitchell Abidor Victor Serge review en recensie

• “Mitchell Abidor’s superb and assertive writing reveals the many faces of Victor Serge, a ‘troublesome witness’ to some of the most decisive moments of his era. This is a vivid and deeply researched account of one of the most compelling lives in modern revolutionary history.” ( Maurice J. Casey, author of Hotel Lux: An Intimate History of Communism’s Forgotten Radicals)
• “Mitchell Abidor’s new biography of the early 20th century radical, memoirist, and novelist best known as Victor Serge is the tale of a left-wing ‘Zelig.’ In Abidor’s tale we meet the leading figures of European anarchism, socialism, and communism, intellectuals as well as activist revolutionaries. Through his life of Serge, Abidor distills the history of Western revolutionary radicalism in the first half of the twentieth century.” (Melvyn Dubofsky, Professor Emeritus of History and Sociology, Binghamton University)
• “A fascinating and provocative biography of a fascinating and provocative man. Tracing Serge’s tumultuous pilgrimage from individualist anarchism to revolutionary socialism to ethical personalism, Abidor testifies to his life-long courage in rethinking left-wing politics.” (Geoffrey Kurtz, Associate Professor of Political Science, Borough of Manhattan Community College)

Victor Serge

Unruly Revolutionary

• Auteur: Mitchell Abodor (Verenigde Staten)
• Soort boek: biografie van de Russische schrijver, revolutionair
• Taal: Engels
• Uitgever: Pluto Press
• Verschijnt: 20 november 2025
• Omvang: 432 pagina’s
• Uitgave: paperback / ebook
• Prijs: £ 19.99 / £ 14.99
• Boek bestellen bij: Amazon / Bol / Libris

Flaptekst van de biografie van schrijver en revolutionair Victor Serge

Ideological schisms have always been a feature of the left, but for much of the early twentieth century they could be deadly. Few revolutionary figures managed to chart such a unique course through the turbulent currents of anarchism and Bolshevism as Victor Serge.

Today, thanks to his classic memoirs and novels, Serge is highly esteemed by virtually all segments of the left. But who was this man, who led such a thrilling life on the frontlines of history? An anarchist? A Bolshevik? A Trotskyist? Or did he evolve into something else entirely?

In this comprehensive account of the life, work and political evolution of Victor Serge, Mitchell Abidor rescues his subject, in all his complexity, from the constraints of any single label. Painting a portrait of a man whose political ideas shifted continually, in response to the major events of his life, we are introduced to several Victor Serges: the youthful anarchist in Belgium and France; the leading Bolshevik in Moscow; the anti-Stalinist who faced imprisonment and expulsion from the Soviet Union.

Examining the lacunae and errors of fact in his memoirs, the hidden Serge is ultimately revealed for what he was: an unruly revolutionary of both great courage and contradictions.

Mitchell Abidor is a writer and translator living in Brooklyn, New York. In addition to his many translation works, he is the author of May Made Me and I’ll Forget It When I Die!: The Bisbee Deportation of 1917. Abidor is the translator and editor of Victor Serge’s anarchist writings, Anarchists Never Surrender, and translated with Richard Greeman Serge’s Notebooks (1936-1947).

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