Bøger af Daniel Kalder

"A mesmerizing study of books by despots great and small, from the familiar to the largely unknown."-The Washington PostA darkly humorous tour of "dictator literature" in the twentieth century, featuring the soul-killing prose and poetry of Hitler, Mao, and many more, which shows how books have sometimes shaped the world for the worseSince the days of the Roman Empire dictators have written books. But in the twentieth-century despots enjoyed unprecedented print runs to (literally) captive audiences. The titans of the genre-Stalin, Mussolini, and Khomeini among them-produced theoretical works, spiritual manifestos, poetry, memoirs, and even the occasional romance novel and established a literary tradition of boundless tedium that continues to this day.How did the production of literature become central to the running of regimes? What do these books reveal about the dictatorial soul? And how can books and literacy, most often viewed as inherently positive, cause immense and lasting harm? Putting daunting research to revelatory use, Daniel Kalder asks and brilliantly answers these questions. Marshalled upon the beleaguered shelves of The Infernal Library are the books and commissioned works of the century's most notorious figures. Their words led to the deaths of millions. Their conviction in the significance of their own thoughts brooked no argument. It is perhaps no wonder then, as Kalder argues, that many dictators began their careers as writers.

A tour of the merciless leaders who inflicted their books upon society, featuring the soul-killing prose and poetry of Hitler, Mao and many more

When Daniel Kalder, acclaimed author of Lost Cosmonaut, descended into the sewers of Moscow in pursuit of the mythical lost city of tramps, he didn't realise that he was embarking on a bizarre, year-long odyssey that would lead him thousands of miles across Russia to the Arctic Circle.

THE ONLY TRUE VOYAGERS, THEREFORE, ARE ANTI-TOURISTS.' Lost Cosmonaut documents Daniel Kalder's travels in the bizarre and mysterious worlds of Russia's ethnic republics.