André Malraux, who was a leftist in his youth, resisted the Nazis during WWII, and became minister of culture under DeGaulle, was a man that defied easy definitions. His novel "Man's Fate" resists easy classifications. This is a political thriller based on true events: a failed Communist uprising in China at the time of the uneasy alliance of Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist forces and the Communists. For reasons of grand strategy, the decision-makers in Moscow opt for sacrificing their people to Chiang, betraying the very cadres who will die for the cause Moscow pushes.
This is the main, but not the only, irony in the novel. There is an assassin who kills because that is the only moment when he truly feels alive (Ch'en). There is a man of mixed European and Japanese ancestry (Kyoshi) who fights for Communism because he believes it is the only answer to the desperate situation of the Chinese workers and peasants, the same Chinese workers and peasants that the rich Chinese have exploited with the help of Europeans, and that the Japanese will kill wholesale in the 1930's and WWII during their war against China. There is a professional communist agitator (Katov) who will behave like a hero when the time comes, but since now we know what the men and women of the Komintern did, it is clear that Katov was familiarized with torture and murder from the torturer and murderer's perspective.
The author's sympathies are with the Communists, but he is too honest not to write clearly that the "heroes" of this book could very well be seen as criminals and terrorists by the other side. "Man's Fate" is an engrossing novel. It reads fast and shows a very human aspect of a doomed revolution where betrayal is the name of the game and expediency the only applicable rule. Thus, the sacrifices that some of the main characters must endure, including torture and death, are reduced to simple convenience or inconvenience for their leaders, who will sacrifice them without a second thought.
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