On August 20, 1940, Marxist philosopher, politician, and revolutionary Leon Trotsky was attacked with an ice axe in his home in Coyoacán, Mexico. He died the next day.

In The Great Prince Died, Bernard Wolfe offers his lyrical, fictionalized account of Trotsky’s assassination as witnessed through the eyes of an array of characters: the young American student helping to translate the exiled Trotsky’s work (and to guard him), the Mexican police chief, a Rumanian revolutionary, the assassin and his handlers, a poor Mexican “peón,” and Trotsky himself. Drawing on his own experiences working as the exiled Trotsky’s secretary and bodyguard and mixing in digressions on Mexican culture, Stalinist tactics, and Bolshevik history, Wolfe interweaves fantasy and fact, delusion and journalistic reporting to create one of the great political novels of the past century.

Bernard Wolfe (1915-85) was an American writer whose interests stretched from cybernetics to politics. He was the author of many books, including Limbo and The Late Risers, and coauthor of Mezz Mezzrow’s classic memoir, Really the Blues.

— Jonathan Lethem

— Selden Rodman, New York Times

— Richard McLaughlin, Boston Globe

— Mildred Zaiman, Hartford Courant

— Newsday

— Larry Grobel, Los Angeles Free Press

— Maurice Dolbier, New York Herald Tribune

— Robert Kirsch, Los Angeles Times, The Book Report

— Mark Perryman, Philosophy Football

— Robert Fulford, National Post