Dizzy with Defeat
The newly published notebooks of the Russian-Belgian revolutionary Victor Serge record the bitter defeats of the twentieth century, but contain within them a boundless curiosity about the world and a stubborn hope for the future.
André Breton, Victor Serge, Benjamin Péret and his wife, 1939, France, Elisa Breton Collection, . (Photo by: Photo12/UIG via Getty Images)
In Christian Petzgold’s 2018 film Transit, a man assumes the identity of a dead anti-Nazi writer. He circles, alongside other refugees, between bureaucrats in Marseille, in an attempt to secure the requisite paperwork to leave Europe. Although it is based on a 1944 novel by the German Jewish Communist Anna Seghers, the film is set […]
Sorry, but this article is available to subscribers only. Please log in or become a subscriber.