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How to Be a Revolutionary:A Novel
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An extraordinary, ambitious, globe-spanning novel about what we owe our consciences
Fleeing her moribund marriage in Cape Town, Beth accepts a diplomatic posting to Shanghai. In this anonymous city she hopes to lose herself in books, wine, and solitude, and to dodge whatever pangs of conscience she feels for her fealty to a South African regime that, by the 21st century, has betrayed its early promises.
At night, she hears the sound of typing, and then late one evening Zhao arrives at her door. They explore hidden Shanghai and discover a shared love of Langston Hughes--who had his own Chinese and African sojourns. But then Zhao vanishes, and a typewritten manuscript--chunk by chunk--appears at her doorstep instead. The truths unearthed in this manuscript cause her to reckon with her own past, and the long-buried story of what happened to Kay, her fearless, revolutionary friend...
Connecting contemporary Shanghai, late Apartheid-era South Africa, and China during the Great Leap Forward and the Tiananmen uprising--and refracting this globe-trotting and time-traveling through Hughes’ confessional letters to a South African protege about the poet's time in Shanghai--How to Be a Revolutionary is an amazingly ambitious novel. It's also a heartbreaking exploration of what we owe our countries, our consciences, and ourselves.
Reviews
On The Blacks of Cape Town: Beautifully written and compelling. She shows how notions of belonging, of home and exile, are contingent on much more than place and history.
How to Be a Revolutionary is a novel about the costs of remembering the past and the far more dire consequences of forgetting it.
South African novelist Davids delivers a politically charged story of love and espionage. An intriguing story that...winds its way to an elegantly satisfying conclusion.
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Deeply rewarding and pleasurable.
, The White Review, Books of the Year 2021 -
There is much to admire here: Davids is excellent on the grind of daily life under repressive regimes, whether it be the brutal terror of apartheid South Africa or the technocratic surveillance state that is present-day China.
, New Internationalist -
Kaleidoscopic...An admirably ambitious and absorbing exploration of activism, betrayal and daily life in interesting times, of increasing relevance in many parts of the world.
, New York Times -
History, like revolutions, is complicated, and Davids is sensitive in her portrayal of the impossible choices that ordinary people face during moments of acute political crisis.
, Paris Review -
C.A. Davids doesn’t shy away from confronting big issues that constitute the human condition today. At its heart is the question of how the specific events and actions that comprise the lives of individuals might speak to, and indeed influence, a shared social consciousness.
, ArtReview -
Exquisite ... the sheer beauty of the prose and the shrewdness of the observations will keep the reader entranced.
, Mail & Guardian -
How To Be A Revolutionary is a fabulous, sometimes frightening flight of transnational imagination, a truly original debut novel by C.A. Davids. The parallel tales of these three uncertain “revolutionaries” include a fictional story of the poet Langston Hughes, and traverse across time and place, from the 1930’s to the present day, circling around Shanghai, Cape Town and Harlem. This novel could be a textbook for how to write politics and history into a novel, without sentimentality or self-righteous ideology, because Davids’ characters are all vital, flawed and persuasively real. As well, the narrative is rooted in a deep understanding of the political histories and worlds it portrays. This is also a profound and complex investigation of what it means to be both privileged and oppressed, and how there are no easy choices on either the “right” or “wrong” side of history. A fascinating read that takes you into many hearts of darkness. Davids is a talented new voice, and a visionary storyteller of the inescapable histories and experiences that connect us all.