Conquered City

"A witness to revolution and reaction in Europe between the wars, Serge searingly evoked the epochal hopes and shattering setbacks of a generation of leftists...Yet under the bleakest of conditions, Serge's optimism, his humane sympathies and generous spirit, never waned. A radical misfit, no faction, no sect could contain him; he inhabited a lonely no-man's-land all his own. These qualities are precisely what make him such an inspiring, even moving figure." --Bookforum

"I know of no other writer with whom Serge can be very usefully compared. The essence of the man and his books is to be found in his attitude to the truth. There have of course been many scrupulously honest writers. But for Serge the value of the truth extended far beyond the simple (or complex) telling of it." --John Berger

"Victor Serge was, and remains, unique: the only novelist to describe successfully, from the inside, the now long-lost milieu of the socialist movement in Europe, its Soviet product, and its destruction by Stalinism.... Serge's novels have never been widely read in English, and it's a pity. His fiction emulated the now-also-defunct French genre of the roman-fleuve or literary river, once exemplified by the work of Jules Romains, in which a group of characters is followed through the passage of decades." --The New Criterion

"The work of the writer Victor Serge faultlessly captures the labyrinth of bureaucratic incrimination into which the Soviet Union descended." --The Atlantic