Hopeful Monsters

Thirty-five years after its original publication, Hopeful Monsters reemerges as one of the “grand intellectual dramas” of the 20th century (—The New York Times).

A sweeping, comprehensive epic, Hopeful Monsters tells the story of the love affair between Max, an English student studying physics and biology, and Eleanor, a German Jew and political radical. Together, Max and Eleanor participate in the great political and intellectual movements which shape the twentieth-century, taking them from Cambridge and Berlin to the Spanish Civil War, Russia, the Sahara, and finally to Los Alamos to witness the first nuclear test.

Originally published as the culminating volume of a series of five works of fiction entitled “Catastrophe Practice” that The Chicago Tribune called “one of the most important extended literary projects of [the 20th] century,” Hopeful Monsters is the first reissue in a new Dalkey Archive initiative to bring Mosley’s epistolary genius back into circulation for modern readers.

Author Biography

Nicholas Mosley (b. 1923) was raised in London, England. He is the author of a dozen novels and a half-dozen works of non-fiction, including an acclaimed biography of his father, the late Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the fascist party in England in the 1930s. Films have been made of two of his novels, Accident (using a screenplay by Harold Pinter and directed by Joseph Losey) and Impossible Object. Mosley passed away in London in 2017 at the age of 93.

Sven Birkerts is the author of 12 books of essays and memoir, most recently The Miro Worm and The Mysteries of Writing. Former Director of the Bennington Writing Seminars, he co-edits the journal AGNI. He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts with his wife.