Man’s Fate by André Malraux
Man’s Fate, an account of a significant incident in the early days of the Chinese Revolution, foreshadows the modern world and vividly illustrates the profound significance of the revolutionary impulse for those involved. It is still as explosive and current today as it was when it was first published in 1933. Andre Malraux’s story is still unparalleled as a study of plot and conspirators, of characters trapped in the tragic battle of ideologies, betrayal, expediency, and free will.
Man's Fate by Andre Malraux
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When he penned this, Malraux was still very early in his writing career. He had previously lived in French Indochina, where he had run into some difficulties with Vietnamese authorities for tomb robbing. At the time, he was also going through a leftist phase of his life. In Man’s Fate, a massacre that made the front page of every newspaper in the globe on April 12, 1927, is described as suppressing the labour movement and the newly formed Communist Party of China. The Kuomintang, led by Chiang Kai-shek, and Shanghai gangsters worked together to brutally put down left-wing strikes that had been planned around the city.
It’s a fantastic book with one of the best openings I can remember in a novel. While watching the target sleep while perched on the canopy above his bed, the assassin is planning how he will fall through and stab the victim in the chest. While he is listening, he can hear horns from passing cars and a traffic jam, the unlubricated wheels of a trolley bus, a phonograph record playing somewhere, and streetlights streaming in through the windows because the book is set in 1920s modern Shanghai.
We are aware that it is 1927 and that a Chinese revolution is currently taking place, yet we are also in a well-advanced metropolis. Malraux demonstrates how Shanghai’s modernity is a result of the 1927 events, the revolution, the establishment of the Communist Party, the labour movement, and the trade unions.
