If you have time for reading over the Labor Day weekend, the Wall Street Journal picks the five best political novels of all time:
1.The Prime Minister by Anthony Trollope (1876): "The tale of an unscrupulous man's campaign for Parliament and the prime minister's wife who supports him against her husband's wishes."
2.Shelley's Heart by Charles McCarry (1995): "America's best writer of espionage novels produced this gripping tale of political intrigue that is also an audacious romp through contemporary Washington mores. A scene at a Georgetown dinner party attended by a former president, a Supreme Court justice, a speaker of the House, a reporter and a lesbian ranks as one of the funniest scenes in contemporary American fiction."
3.Death of a Red Heroine by Qiu Xiaolong (2000): "Qiu's inspector-poet risks all when his investigation takes him too close to one of China's untouchable princelings, the son of a high-ranking official in Beijing."
4.Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler (1941): "Darkness at Noon recounts the fate of Rubashov, an old revolutionary who is charged with treason and thrown in prison, where he is brainwashed and tortured; he ultimately confesses to imaginary crimes against the state."
5.All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (1946): "Robert Penn Warren was the nation's first poet laureate, and it's easy to understand why when lingering over the beautiful language in this lushly written novel. But it's also a rollicking good read. Based on the life of Huey 'Kingfish' Long of Louisiana, All the King's Men is the rags-to-riches story of Willie Stark, a small-town Southern politician who starts out as an idealistic young man of the people and ends up corrupted by the system he had sought to reform."
August 27, 2006
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