About this ebook
Examining the mind of a revolutionary and the impersonality of ideology, The Silent Prophet is Roth’s self-described Trotsky novel—written around 1928 but never published in the author’s lifetime. Based on his own observations during an extended stay in Moscow in the winter of 1926, The Silent Prophet is Roth’s vivid attempt to explain the Russian Revolution and its betrayal by exposing the personal motivations of its leaders. The illegitimate and rootless Friedrich Kargan—the Trotsky figure—goes compulsorily but willingly into exile in Siberia after openly defying the coldly amoral Savelli—the novel’s Stalin figure. Written at the height of speculation about Trotsky’s fate, The Silent Prophet is a brilliant portrayal of revolutionary idealism-turned-cynicism.
About the author
Joseph Roth was born in 1894 in a small Galician town on the eastern borders of the Hapsburg Empire. After serving in the Austro-Hungarian army from 1916 to 1918, he worked as a journalist in Vienna and in Berlin. He died in Paris in 1939, leaving behind thirteen novels as well as many stories and essays.
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