Contest - Win a Copy of Wizard of the Crow

The nice folks at Pantheon have decided to sponsor a couple of contests for a free copy of Wizard of the Crow, mailed to the address of your choice.

For contest number one, we'd like to hear about what you have found to be your favorite story - fiction or non-fiction - about dictatorial excess?

Contestants must respond in the comments section of this post by 9 p.m. PST, Friday, February 9th.  We will notify the winner via email and then post their name at the end of the comments string sometime early next week.

Comments

[bruno lenfestey]

Ahmadou Kourouma's 'Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote' details so many & various dictatorial excesses it'd be hard to better. Not that the South & Central Americans haven't made supreme attempts to do just that. As a little man and timid, I love to dream the grandiose and grotesque.

[Levi]

I'm not applying for a copy (since I already have one) but I must mention the play "Caligula" by Albert Camus.

[Kirk McElhearn]

It's pretty hard to look beyond 1984, because of the sheer terror of the invisible dictator. While portraying a dictator in fiction, as Russell Banks did in Darling, is interesting, it still has its limits, especially to those who have never lived in a dictatorial regime. The impersonality of Big Brother is unforgettable because of the lack of detail. Just as books are more powerful than movies, because of the way they inspire your imagination, Big Brother is more powerful than any visible dictator because of the oppressive feeling you get from his omnipresence, and the way an entire system is built around his existence (or non-existence), leading people to fear fear itself more than the actual dictator. The way such a system incites collaboration and denunciation is far more powerful, and more chilling, than any physical portrayal of a person could ever be.

Kirk

[jenn]

for my money (and hopefully a copy of Wizard of the Crow) it's Animal Farm by Orwell. not only does it capture the pre-excess good intentions, but the inevitable downslide. and who could forget the final scene -- pigs in full human regalia, sitting down to dinner? i think ultimately, the use of metaphor/parable/allegory (i've heard it referred to as all three) or, in plain english, substituting animals for humans, is what gives Animal Farm ultimately more impact on the mind than, say, 1984.

[amcorrea]

I've already brought up García Márquez's Autumn of the Patriarch (El otoño del patriarcha), but this is the perfect place to talk about it again. No paragraphs, no conversations...and the last chapter is one sentence, about 50 pages long. There is very little breathing room in this nightmarish trip through a brutal dictator's life and times. You remember what it was like before the very sea was sold...the barren waste that is now the Caribbean lies under the blazing sun like an ashen expanse of death. The mind boggles at the inhuman atrocities...yet at the same time realizes that it's all happened before and that Gabo is only tipping back the rock to expose what festers in the darkness underneath.

[jenn]

so who won the copy?

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Before Wizard of the Crow, it used to be George Orwell's Animal Farm. Now i know better. Upon reading Wizard of the Crow i get the feeling that somebody killed Africa.

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