I've started getting some holiday gifts for my family and I'd like to pick my dad up some left-leaning novels.
He reads a lot, and is a left-leaning boomer but also really liked Obama (ewww cringe).
For his birthday I picked him up " Three Penny Novel " by Brecht, but I realised that I don't know of any other socialist fiction authors other than Brecht (everything else he wrote were plays, so not really reading-friendly).
Any of you able to recommend me some socialist-influenced works of fiction/novels that I could pick him up?
Thanks :fidel-salute:
he's a great pick considered a classic. Plus grapes of wrath is really good for explaining a lot of issues
Somewhere to start looking: Proletarian literature . Edward Dahlberg and Henry Roth are great writers. I don't remember Roth's politics but Call It Sleep is definitely working-class.
Socialist police procedurals - I mention these a lot on here, so forgive me, anyone who's reread the same post. The Martin Beck series, by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö
There's some doubt about Carlos Fuentes, but the FBI certainly considered him a communist.
Guido Morselli's The Communist is rather critical of the Italian Communist Party but it's still a thoroughly socialist novel.
Ousmane Sembene.
Ngugi wa Thiong'o.
Kobo Abe. (Left the party after 1956, but there's plenty of socialism in Woman in the Dunes.)
If your dad likes experimental fiction - Juan Goytisolo. Alasdair Gray, whose novel Poor Things will be a Yorgos Lanthimos film soon. Peter Weiss.
The Martin Beck series sounds perfect. He loves murder mystery stuff, and not so fond of sci fri. Ordering them now thanks comrade :party-cat:
Awesome! I hope he enjoys. My favorite volumes are the middle ones. The Laughing Policeman, #4, is generally regarded to be the best.
For an example of the politics of the series -
Murder at the Savoy begins with a wealthy industrialist being shot while he's in the middle of dinner at a fancy hotel. During the course of the investigation, the detectives learn that he was an arms dealer who worked with apartheid South Africa, was a slum lord who evicted everyone he could, etc., etc. It becomes apparent that just about everyone alive would have had a motive to murder this dude and the real mystery becomes not whodunit but whether the detectives will be able to let whoever did it get away scot-free.
That's fucking awesome. I might have to borrow them from him when he's done.
I haven't read any of his books aside from the narrative history, "October," but China Miéville might be worth looking into.
The City and the City is great for anyone who likes detective fiction and/or Disco Elysium
If theyre in to SF/fantasy Ken Macleod's Fall Revolution . The Culture.
The Commonweal is digital published only but very left wing fantasy.
The short story "emergency skin" is also great I I'm meaning to read their other work.
Some good ones have already been suggested in LeGuin and Vonnegut, I'd also suggest Parable of the Sower, by Octavia Bulter.
does he like genre fiction? China Mieville isn't typical SF/F, but it is incredibly compelling. Also I'll recommend Clarice Lispector
Pelle the Conqueror is the story of an immigrant child who lives in deep rural poverty and grows up to become a labour leader. It's author Martin Andersen Nexø was one of the most translated Danish authors and was awarded honorary citizenship of the GDR.
The Year 200 by Agustin de Rojas is a really fun sci-fi spy thriller that just happens to be set in a world in which communism has won
The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi is a sci-fi thriller about climate change and drought in the SW USA.
Cosmonaut Keep by Ken MacLeod is a weird sci-fi story about cosmonauts that were abducted by aliens and dumped on a faraway planet. The author is either a trot or an anarchist and has an axe to grind about MLs, especially in the sequels. Dark Light is also good, the story centers around a revolution, and one of the main characters is trans (sort of, they're from a culture with unusual gender roles). Engine City isn't that great, I'd skip it unless you really want to finish the trilogy.
Anything by Charles Stross is great, he writes mostly sci-fi/fantasy/horror, and there's some leftist themes in most of his novels, some more subtle than others (like the time that Lovecraftian horrors were unleashed by Thatcherite privatization). I'd recommend either The Merchant Princes series (fantasy/sci-fi/political thriller), The Laundry Files series (sci-fi/fantasy/Lovecraftian cosmic horror/thriller/comedy), or the standalone novel Glasshouse (sci-fi/FALGSC/body horror).
Edit: There's also Saturn's Children about a society of intelligent robots living after humanity went extinct due to climate change, and Saturn's Children, a sequel about those societies colonizing space, and the weird financial systems they use to run an interstellar economy. Apparently it was inspired by Debt: the First 5,000 Years, and features a society of communist robot squids that engineered their own brains to think communally.
