Koba the Dread ─ Laughter and the Twenty Million

Koba the Dread is the successor to Martin Amis's celebrated memoir, Experience. It is largely political (while remaining personal). It addresses itself to the central lacuna of twentieth-century thought: the indulgence of communism by intellectuals of the West. In between the personal beginning and the personal ending, Amis gives us perhaps the best one hundred pages ever written about Stalin: Koba the Dread, Iosif the Terrible.

Martin Amis is the bestselling author of several books, including London Fields, Money, The Information, and Experience. He lives in London.