Kalder, Daniel, 1974- author.
New York : Henry Holt and Company, 2018.
xvi, 379 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Introduction: Tradition and the individual tyrant — Phase I: The dictator’s canon — Lenin — Stalin — Mussolini — Hitler — Mao — Phase II: Tyranny and mutation — Small demons — Catholic action — Disembraining machines — Eastern approaches — Dead letters — Another green world — Phase III: Dissolution and madness — Midnight in the garden of ultraboredom — North Korea: the metafictions of Kim Jong-il — Cuba: Castro’s maximum verbiage — Iraq: the historical romances of Saddam Hussein — Post-Soviet: Comrade Zoroaster — Turkmenistan: post-everything — Phase IV: Death is not the end — Conclusion.
“A harrowing tour of ‘dictator literature’ in the twentieth-century, featuring the soul-killing prose and poetry of Hitler, Mao, and many more, which shows how books have sometimes shaped the world for the worse.” — From book jacket.

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