BITTER HARVEST

by Edmund- Compiler Stillman ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 24, 1959

If one were to compile an elaborate anti-Soviet propaganda piece from the whole cloth of Western attitudes, they could hardly surpass the effectiveness of this anthology. Consisting of poems, essays and stories by a sampling of writers living under the Soviet regime, either in Russia or in Russian-controlled countries, the literary calibre manifest here varies widely. But singularly alike in the stories is the tone of bitterness, despair and a tiredness which reaches the proportions of the Kafka novel: the frantic mother of the sick child unable to cross the barriers of hospital bureaucracy; the tale of a love affair broken by impossible living conditions; the sixteen-year-old prostitute who plies her grim trade out of desperate feminine necessity; situations which within the literary framework of social realism emerge as a racking cry that man is something more than the state. Some of the authors herein represented are exiles, some are dead, some continue living, for better or worse in the Soviet union, but as with one voice they join in their agonized litany of great frustration. Though most of the stories are somewhat oppressive in tone, Hlasko, an emigre since 1958, relates his grim story, A Point Mister? with a swift and comic irony which distinguishes his work from the others for its admirable literary quality.

Pub Date: April 24, 1959

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Praeger

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1959

Categories: FICTION