Andre Gide, Arthur Koestler et al. - The God That Failed

The God That Failed (Harper & Row, 1963). Edited by Richard Crossman, with contributions by André Gide, Arthur Koestler, Richard Wright, Ignazio Silone, Stephen Spender, and Louis Fischer. 273 pp.


THE GOD THAT FAILED, originally published in 1949, is a classic work and crucial document of the Cold War that brings together essays by six of the most important writers of the twentieth century on their conversion to and subsequent disillusionment with communism.

André Gide (France), Arthur Koestler (Germany), Richard Wright (United States), Ignazio Silone (Italy), Stephen Spender (England), and Louis Fischer, an American foreign correspondent, all tell how their search for the betterment of humanity led them to communism, and the personal agony and revulsion which then caused them to reject it.

This PDF is an improved and smaller version of an older scan in which the page images have been completely reprocessed with contents in bookmarks and accurate pagination.


Reviews

"The moving power of their several chronicles derives not merely from the unity of the theme embodied in significant variations but also from the reader's sense that they are recording a tragedy in which all of us have been involved." -- Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nation

"The story of the emotions which drew such men to Communism and of the events which disillusioned them states concretely and compellingly the great issues of our time." -- The Saturday Review of Literature

"An important contribution to our understanding of Communism in its full dimensions and awful depths." -- New York Herald Tribune

"To understand the Cold War and the character of Stalinism, The God That Failed is a must read." -- Daniel Bell