History holds many examples of political activists who have paid for their politics with their lives. From military suppressions to secretly engineered assassinations, the price of revlutionary politics is often dear, especially when the revolutionaries are writers, whose only offences against the state are their words. This is a study of three victims of political assassination. It explores the intricate relations between politically engaged imaginative writing and participation in revolutionary struggles. Ghassan Kanafani in Palestine, Roque Dalton in El Salvador and Ruth First in South Africa laboured on behalf of social revolutions that none of them lived to see. In all three cases, the result of the armed conflict in which they were involved has been negotiated settlements with the enemy. The book explores the complex tensions that motivate and condition political writing, as well as its legacies to the movements in whose names it was undertaken. It measures the costs and benefits that accrue to writers who put their lives and works on the line. Barbara Harlow is the author of "Resistance Literature", and "Barred: Women, Writing and Political Detention".
- ISBN10 1859848257
- ISBN13 9781859848258
- Publish Date 4 November 1996
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 25 May 2001
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Verso Books
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 192
- Language English