In 1907, the tsar-ruled Russian Empire bursts at the seams. Persecuted in Russia and beyond, Communists--men and women, workers and intellectuals, true believers, spies and opportunists alike--gather in London for the Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Party. This sets the scene for Sell Us the Rope, a gripping historical novel by Stephen May. One protagonist is a former poet traveling as Koba, a beautiful, passionate young man from the country of Georgia. Today he is better known as Stalin. The co-star is Elli, a working-class woman who is more than a match for his intelligence, emotional sensitivity, ideological intensity and strident ambition. As they draw ever closer to the power centers of the Party--politicking, schmoozing, dodging knives aimed at their backs--they also draw closer to each other.
The squalid, early 20th-century London setting is Dickensian, minus the comfortable assurance of a happy ending. May (Life! Death! Prizes!) brings the city to life with a magnificent, if often grotesque, level of period detail: jammed flophouses, streets paved with horse manure, toilets that, if they exist at all, can be flushed only once a day. He combines characters--Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Rosa Luxemburg--who loom so large in history that they are difficult to think of as people at all with others whose stories and voices have been lost. And he crafts a drama both personal and political, a page-turning tale of idealism and intrigue and a cautionary tale of youthful zealotry. --Walker Minot, writer and editor