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As in Amis' bestselling memoir, "Experience," his father, the equally well known British novelist Kingsley Amis who died in 1995, is present everywhere in this book. Amis the father was a Communist fellow traveler in the 1940s and 1950s who renounced his beliefs in the 1960s, becoming an outspoken conservative.
In "[Iosif Stalin] the Terrible: Short Course," the heart of the book, Amis dissects Stalin, "that fabulously overweening ignoramus," calling him "a passionate lowbrow whose personality was warping and cracking in the heat of power."
Readers won't find a coherent history here, and may be confused by Amis' peculiar literary approach. He moves back and forth in time, jumps from events to people and back again, and digresses often, irritatingly, in footnotes. Few of his reactions can compare, say, with the pathos, humor and nuance of the Soviet writers whom he quotes, whose experiences during the Stalin dictatorship leave an indelible impression.