Revolutionary Subjects
A Radical History of the Bildungsroman
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Verso Books
Publishing:11th Aug '26
£19.99
This title is due to be published on 11th August, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
The literary history of radical selfhood across borders and centuries.
What do novels reveal about how radical selves are made?
Kohlmann traces two centuries of literature shaped by emancipatory and internationalist commitments, charting the evolution of "red" world writing and the aesthetic forms that carry its politics. At the center is the radical Bildungsroman, which rewrites dominant ideas of personal development. From Sartre's Roads to Freedom to Ding Ling's The Sun Shines Over Sanggan River, these works imagine the self through collective struggle and global solidarity.
Seen, for once, from a radically global perspective, as Kohlmann allows us to see it, the bildungsroman reveals a genuinely radical counter-tradition. A source of much-needed cultural sustenance in hard times. -- Bruce Robbins
Everyone in novel studies needs to read this book! Kohlmann uncovers a counter-tradition to the traditional bildungsroman plot-the radical left bildungsroman-which is formally experimental and committed to the collective and transnational work of living and making worlds together. With bravura new readings of a vast range of novelists, from Nikolay Chernyshevsky and Nanni Balestrini to Ding Ling, Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, and Doris Lessing, this is a magisterial work of criticism. -- Caroline Levine, author of The Activist Humanist: Form and Method in the Climate Crisis
ISBN: 9781804297278
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 400g
224 pages
Paperback original