The Iron Bridge
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Shortlisted, Danuta Gleed Literary Award
In a bold, brilliant collection of stories, Dora Award-winning playwright Anton Piatigorsky delivers a superbly inspired inquiry into the early lives of the 20th century's most notorious tyrants. In The Iron Bridge, he is unafraid to push at the boundaries of the unexpected as he breathes fictionalized life into the adolescents who would grow up to become the most brutal dictators the world has ever known.
We discover a teenaged Mao Tse-Tung refusing an arranged marriage; Idi Amin cooking for the British Army; Stalin living in a seminary; and a melodramatic young Adolf Hitler dreaming of vast architectural achievements. Piatigorsky dazzlingly explores moments that are nothing more than vague incidents in the biographies of these men, expanding mere footnotes into entire realities as he ingeniously fills the gaps of the historical record.
The Iron Bridge, completely imagined yet captivatingly real, captures those crucial instants in time that may well have helped to deliver some of the most infamous leaders in history.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The 20th century's most bloodthirsty tyrants are given humble beginnings in this collection of six stories by acclaimed playwright Piatigorsky. Through smart dialogue and revealing internal monologue, he brings to life the teenage years of Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, and Idi Amin, among others. Though it is difficult to separate these young men from the horrible acts they will later commit, Piatigorsky circumvents readers' preconceptions by drawing on small moments that humanize his protagonists, instead of pinpointing exactly when things went wrong. The use of nicknames (Adi for Hitler, Soso for Stalin) is especially deft in drawing attention away from the historical inevitabilities. Though the descriptive prose is periodically stale and forced, Piatigorsky's experience as a playwright comes through in quick and entertaining dialogue that feels true to the varied time periods and sustains momentum through each long story. When the young Adi Hitler defensively says, "It is a terrible mistake to judge an artist by the same standard as one would judge an artisan," the comment is not just true to history, but revealing of a historical monster's human side.
