 | |
| Author | Martin Amis |
|---|---|
| Publication date | 2002 |
| ISBN | 9780676975178 |
Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million is a 2002 non-fiction book by British writer Martin Amis.
Summary
The book is a study of the depredations of the regime of Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union from the 1920s to the 1950s. The title alludes to Stalin's nickname "Koba", and the estimated 20 million deaths in the Soviet Union during Stalin's rule owing to starvation, torture, gulags, and the purges and confessions of Stalin's Great Terror. The estimate of deaths under Stalin comes from Robert Conquest's work, a key source and personal friend of Amis.
Reception
The book received a mixed reception. The Guardian gave it an average rating of 2.7 out of 10 based on reviews from multiple British newspapers. Globally, Complete Review saying on the consensus "No consensus, but the majority of opinion is decidedly negative -- and very many use the words "self-indulgent".
In The New York Times, critic Michiko Kakutani described the book as "the narcissistic musings of a spoiled, upper-middle class litterateur who has never known the kind of real suffering Stalin's victims did". Publishers Weekly found that Amis "relates passionately a story that needs to be told, the history of a regime that murdered its own people in order to build a better future for them." Author Anne Applebaum, writing in Slate, argued that "Koba the Dread is not, in fact, a competent account of Stalin's reign but rather a muddled misrendering of both Soviet and Western intellectual history."
The Leningrad-born American writer Gary Shteyngart called Koba "harrowing and strangely funny" in The Washington Post, explaining: "'Koba the Dread' is not easy to forget. Along with the laughter it offers the reader unfamiliar with Stalin's legacy a number that is the first step in understanding Russia's modern tragedy. That number, once again, is twenty million." In The New York Times Book Review, writer and critic Paul Berman called the work "one of the oddest books about Stalin ever written, indignant, angry, personal and strangely touching ... book carries a punch, artfully delivered—a punch that comes from looking at death and finding in it nothing but pain, cruelty, sadness, pointlessness and loss, a punch that comes from gazing at the indescribably horrific prison camps of the Soviet Union, or that comes from watching one's father and sister die." The book received scathing reviews in the United Kingdom. Historian Orlando Figes criticised Amis for, amongst other things, comparing the crying of his six-month daughter with the cries from Butyrka prison in Moscow during the Great Terror.
Controversy
The book occasioned a public schism between Amis and fellow writer and close friend Christopher Hitchens, especially in the pages of The Atlantic, where Hitchens described Koba the Dread as "Stalinism without irony". The break was later mended.
See also
References
- Rocca, Christian (7 August 2002). "Koba the Dread di Martin Amis". Linkiesta (in Italian). Retrieved 8 April 2024.
- "Article clipped from The Daily Telegraph". Newspapers. Retrieved 8 June 2024.
- "Article clipped from The Daily Telegraph". Newspapers. Retrieved 8 June 2024.
- "A Jewish excites the critics". The Guardian. 14 September 2002. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 8 April 2024 – via Newspapers.com.
- "Koba the Dread". Complete Review. 4 October 2023. Retrieved 4 October 2023.
- Kakutani, Michiko (26 June 2002). "Recounting the Suffering of Russia Under Stalin". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331.
- "Koba The Dread". Publishers Weekly. May 2002. ISSN 0000-0019.
- Applebaum, Anne (13 August 2002). "Martin Amis swings at Stalin and hits his own best friend instead". Slate. ISSN 1091-2339. Retrieved 8 April 2024.
- Shteyngart, Gary (21 July 2002). "Gallows Humor". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 8 April 2024.
- Berman, Paul (28 July 2002). "A Million Deaths is Not Just a Statistic". The New York Times Books Review. ISSN 0028-7806.
- Figdes, Orlando (1 September 2002). "A shocking lack of decorum". The Daily Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 8 April 2024.
- Applebaum, Anne (13 August 2002). "The Gulag Argumento". Slate. ISSN 1091-2339. Retrieved 8 April 2024.
- "N/A". The Times Literary Supplement. 2002. ISSN 0307-661X. Archived from the original on 26 August 2011. Retrieved 8 April 2024.
- Hitchens, Christopher (1 September 2002). "Lightness at Midnight". The Atlantic. ISSN 2151-9463. Archived from the original on 11 August 2023. Retrieved 8 April 2024.
{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) - Amis, Martin (24 April 2011). "Amis on Hitchens: 'He's one of the most terrifying rhetoricians the world has seen'". The Observer. ISSN 0029-7712. Archived from the original on 21 August 2013. Retrieved 8 April 2024.