"The Fall of a Titan" by Igor Gouzenko, translated from the Russian by Mervyn Black, published by W.W. Norton and Company, New York, 1954. First BOMSC Edition with 'w' on the copyright page and small black dot on the backboard.

Hard boards, original cloth spine; small decoration on front board, 6" x 8.3/4"; 629 pages, slightly bumped bottom corner of the pages, very good/ fine condition.

"The Fall of a Titan", is a novel about the injustices and the brutality of Stalinist Russia. The 'titan' is a world renown author, Mikhail Gorin mirroring the life of Maxim Gorki, "a humanist whose writings inspired the revolution as an anti-Tsarists." He attacked and opposed the Bolshevik seizure of power during the 1917 Revolution and was censored by Lenin, which eventually led to his exile to Fascist Italy, until he was asked to return to Russia by Stalin. To the suspicious death of his son, his house arrest and eventually his own mysterious death, after only three years after his return from exile. And to the scene where Stalin and high Party Officials standing at the head of Gorins Casket.

The NKVD (Secret Police, later to be known as the KGB) used tactics and questionable cover-ups similarly to the Nazi Gestapo. One of the main characters Feodor Novikov who had risen in his career by his involvement with NKVD and was assigned to Manipulate Gorin into writing a play about Ivan the Terrible. Professor Novikov marries Lida, the daughter of a director of a manufacturing plant. The marriage lasts until Lida's father is arrested and declared an enemy of the state. To protect his standing in the communist party and his relationship with the NKVD, Professor Novikov divorces his pregnant wife, and leaves her to defend for herself...

"This novel is basically a story of Good vs. Evil, and Evil seemingly prevails. Once you do work for the NKVD, you never can be free of them. They control your life and they architect evil." [from a private review].

Igor Sergeyevich Gouzenko was a cipher clerk for the Soviet Embassy to Canada in Ottawa, Ontario. He defected on September 5, 1945, with 109 documents on Soviet espionage activities in the West. This forced Prime Minister Mackenzie King to call a Royal Commission to investigate espionage in Canada. The New York Times described Gouzenko's actions as having "awakened the people of North America to the magnitude and the danger of Soviet espionage." Gouzenko and his family were given another identity by the Canadian government out of fear of Soviet reprisals. Little is known about his life afterwards, but it is understood that he and his wife settled down to a middle-class existence under an assumed name in the Toronto suburb of Clarkson.

US: Priority (c.2-4 days) ---------- $12.50
Canada: Priority (c.2-6 weeks) ---- $32.50
World: Priority (c.2-8 weeks) ----- $45.50