Award-winning writer China Miéville has long been inspired by the ideals of the Russian Revolution and here, on the centenary of the revolution, he provides his own distinctive take on its history. In this talk, Miéville reveals the Russian Revolution as a breathtaking story in its passion and drama and strangeness for newcomers and old radicals alike.
Miéville will be reading from his new book, October: The Story of the Russian Revolution (Verso), telling the extraordinary story of an unimaginable transformation – a political event of profound and ongoing consequence – before joining Sarah Perks, Artistic Director (Visual Art) at HOME and Professor of Visual Art at Manchester School of Art, in conversation.
There’ll also be an opportunity to get your copy of October signed by the author.
October: The Story of the Russian Revolution (Verso) plunges us into the year that turned the world upside down: a political event of profound and ongoing consequence.
In February 1917, in the midst of bloody war, Russia was still an autocratic monarchy: nine months later, it became the first socialist state in world history. How did this unimaginable transformation take place? How was a ravaged and backward country, swept up in a desperately unpopular war, rocked by not one but two revolutions?
October tells the story of the extraordinary months between those upheavals, in February and October, of the forces and individuals who made 1917 so epochal a year, of their intrigues, negotiations, conflicts and from familiar names like Lenin and Trotsky to their opponents Kornilov and Kerensky; from the byzantine squabbles of urban activists to the remotest villages of a sprawling empire; from the revolutionary railroad Sublime to the ciphers and static of coup by telegram; from grand sweep to forgotten detail.
In partnership with Verso.
