In the vocational struggle to hold the reader’s attention, the writer of historical fiction has an advantage. Whereas non-historical novelists must coax us into caring about nobodies, those who portray famous characters can assume our automatic interest: we relish the chance to see up close and intimately the great men and women of the past. For his fifth novel and first foray into historical fiction, Stephen May, whose prior work includes the novels Stronger Than Skin and Wake Up Happy Every Day along with a number of plays, has selected a particularly glamorous cast and setting. It’s London, May 1907, and a gathering of Marxist revolutionists including Stalin (known here as Koba, his self-chosen name after a heroic figure from Georgian folklore), Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, Trotsky and Maxim Gorky have convened at the 5th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour party.
It’s a decade before the revolution, and Stalin is a young buck of 29 with a dialectical-materialist dream in his heart and a twinkle in his eye. No sooner has he stepped off the boat in an England whose degradations are evoked with Hogarthian relish than we mark a flicker of the dark personality that will wreak unquantifiable terror on the future Soviet Union: perceiving a slight from one of his comrades, he logs the transgression while silently vowing revenge.
