Hotel Lux: An Intimate History of Communism’s Forgotten Radicals

In this vibrant debut from historian Casey, a hotel in 1920s Moscow serves as unofficial headquarters to a group of expat revolutionaries whose exploits “would seem outlandish in a work of fiction.” They include Irish communist–turned–London suffragette May O’Callaghan, dispatched by fellow feminists to witness the aftermath of the October Revolution; London-born Polish-Jewish radical organizer Nellie Cohen, who emigrated to put her talents at the service of the Comintern with her sister, Rose, only for the latter to disappear in Stalin’s purges; dashing and self-mythologizing Irish writer Liam O’Flaherty; tormented New York poet Joseph Freedman; and married German trade unionists Edo and Emmy Fimmen. Casey’s narrative, which is split between political intrigue (O’Callaghan’s plans to make O’Flaherty a mouthpiece of the revolution; the repression of Freedman’s memoir An American Testament once he falls afoul of Russian censors) and personal calamity (Emmy’s pregnancy while Edo is waylaid abroad in futile efforts against the rise of the Nazis; the womanizing O’Flaherty’s scandalous relationship with Cohen), depicts this found family of “restless souls with impossible desires” as everyday foot soldiers of a global revolution, without whose commitment (and messiness) the careers of more vaunted figures would not be possible (American novelist Theodore Dreiser, Marxist philosopher Simone Weil, and exiled dissident writer Victor Serge all make appearances). Told in novelistic prose and narrated like an archival detective story, this enchants. (Oct.)