{"product_id":"koba-the-dread-laughter-and-the-twenty-million-9781400032204","title":"Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million","description":"\u003cb\u003eA brilliant weave of personal involvement, vivid biography and political insight, \u003ci\u003eKoba the Dread\u003c\/i\u003e is the successor to Martin Amis's award-winning memoir, \u003ci\u003eExperience\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKoba the Dread\u003c\/i\u003e captures the appeal of one of the most powerful belief systems of the 20th century -- one that spread through the world, both captivating it and staining it red. It addresses itself to the central lacuna of 20th-century thought: the indulgence of Communism by the intellectuals of the West. In between the personal beginnings and the personal ending, Amis gives us perhaps the best one-hundred pages ever written about Stalin: Koba the Dread, Iosif the Terrible. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e The author's father, Kingsley Amis, though later reactionary in tendency, was a \"Comintern dogsbody\" (as he would come to put it) from 1941 to 1956. His second-closest, and then his closest friend (after the death of the poet Philip Larkin), was Robert Conquest, our leading Sovietologist whose book of 1968, \u003ci\u003eThe Great Terror\u003c\/i\u003e, was second only to Solzhenitsyn's \u003ci\u003eThe Gulag Archipelago\u003c\/i\u003e in undermining the USSR. The present memoir explores these connections. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Stalin said that the death of one person was tragic, the death of a million a mere \"statistic.\" \u003ci\u003eKoba the Dread\u003c\/i\u003e, during whose course the author absorbs a particular, a familial death, is a rebuttal of Stalin's aphorism.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eMARTIN AMIS \u003c\/b\u003eis the author of 15 novels--among them \u003ci\u003eZone of Interest, London Fields, Time's Arrow, The Information, \u003c\/i\u003eand\u003ci\u003e Night Train\u003c\/i\u003e--along with the memoir \u003ci\u003eExperience, \u003c\/i\u003e the novelized self-portrait \u003ci\u003eInside Story\u003c\/i\u003e, two collections of stories, and seven nonfiction books. He died in 2023.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50918027985170,"sku":"9781400032204","price":16.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_db8c610b-d395-4550-83b9-b920938e68ec.jpg?v=1774963293","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/koba-the-dread-laughter-and-the-twenty-million-9781400032204","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}