Spufford - Red Plenty

Acclaim for Red Plenty from the United Kingdom

Like no other history book I have ever read Spuffords book is almost impossible to categorise. In many ways it reads like a collection of stories, and yet it is hard to believe that there could be a better and more rigorous evocation of that brief, illusory moment when Soviet communism seemed poised to transform the world. [I] finished it in awe, not merely at Spuffords Stakhanovite research, but at his skill as a novelist, his judgement as a historian and his sheer guts in attempting something simultaneously so weird and yet so wonderful.

The Sunday Times

Readers of novels often recoil from the limited range of human emotions and the drearily functional style evident in most works of nonfiction where one battle becomes much like another and any old queen a surrogate for the rest. Francis Spuffords extraordinarily inventive venture into factionif we must attach a label to his remarkable Red Plenty should be a welcome antidote to that. One can scarcely think of a recent book that conveys the everyday textures of life in the Soviet Union so well. This is a thrilling book that all enthusiasts of the Big State should read.

The Sunday Telegraph

Strange, risky and compelling the audacity of the subject and the superb craftsmanship of the writing won me over.

The Observer

Everyone knows that economic central planning in the Soviet Union was a failure. Many people can make a stab at saying why. Few will expect to pick up a longish book on the topic by a non-economist and devour it almost at a sitting. But that is what you have in store with Red Plenty. It is part detective storywho or what is killing the Soviet economy?and part a brilliantly clear explanation of some very intricate history and economics.

The Economist

Strange and wonderful. Spufford cunningly maps out a literary genre of his ownor rather a set of artfully interwoven genresin which he can make the most recondite intellectual inquiry into something freewheeling and fabulous.

The Times

Spufford, who has succeeded in turning possibly the least promising fictional material of all time into an incredibly smart, surprisingly involving and deeply eccentric book, a hammer-and-sickle version of Altmans Nashville, with central committees replacing country music. I am not alone in thinking that he has one of the most original minds in contemporary literature.

Nick Hornby, The Believer

Francis Spuffords new book is a virtuoso piece of storytelling. Red Plenty is peopled by both real and fictional characters: brilliant young scientists and economists, low-level Party members and factory managers. Each one, even the most corrupt, is drawn with such a generous understanding that I found myself stalling at the end of every chapter, regretting already that I would soon be leaving their company. This is not a novel it is a fairy tale, Spufford claims in his prologue and there really is something magical, almost uncanny, in his ability to create such a marvellously satisfying, technicolour world.

The Daily Telegraph

Spuffords narrative can be read as a sort of reverse magic realism. Given the absurdities inherent in so much of Soviet life, this is an effective and convincing way to proceed. Much of the writing is elegant and precise, with delightful and original turns of phrase.

The Independent

Id never have believed anybody claiming that an account of shadow prices, and the formal equivalence in a general equilibrium model of a centrally planned economy and a market economy, would make for a gripping read. But here is that book, which I devoured in a couple of sessions.

Diane Coyle, enlightenedeconomics.com

Heed me, tovarishchi! Francis Spuffords half-novel/half-history Red Plenty is by far the best popular account of the Soviet utopian experiment I have readand Ive read a few. It is neatly conceived and brilliantly realised, an enormously pleasurable and instructive book. The cumulative effect is little short of breathtaking. Red Plenty is a master class in the expert control of a canvas and theme that, in a lesser writer, could very easily have sprawled out of control. Its an extraordinary achievement.

Strangehorizons.com

by the same author

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Francis Spufford

Graywolf Press

Copyright 2010 by Francis Spufford

First published by Faber and Faber Ltd, London

This publication is made possible in part by a grant provided by the Minnesota State Arts Board, through an appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature from the Minnesota general fund and its arts and cultural heritage fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4, 2008, and a grant from the Wells Fargo Foundation of Minnesota. Significant support has also been provided by the National Endowment for the Arts; Target; the McKnight Foundation; and other generous contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. To these organizations and individuals we offer our heartfelt thanks.

Published by Graywolf Press

250 Third Avenue North, Suite 600

Minneapolis, Minnesota 55401

All rights reserved.

www.graywolfpress.org

Published in the United States of America

ISBN 978-1-55597-604-0

Ebook ISBN 978-1-55597-041-3

2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1

First Graywolf Printing, 2012

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011942042

Cover design: Alvaro Villanueva

Cover photo: Triumphant Youth, USSR circa 1960. The Dmitri Baltermants Collection/Corbis

For my mother