Description

The extraordinary story of a group of forgotten radicals who found themselves drawn to communist Moscow s hotbed of international revolutionary activity: the Hotel Lux. Hotel Lux follows Irish radical May O Callaghan and her friends, three revolutionary families brought together by their vision for a communist future and their time spent in the Comintern s Moscow living quarters, the Hotel Lux. Historian Maurice Casey reveals the connections and disconnections of a group of forgotten communist activists whose lives collided in 1920s Moscow: a brilliant Irish translator, a maverick author, the rebel daughters of an East London Jewish family, and a family of determined German anti-fascists. The dramatic and interlocking histories of the O Flahertys, Cohens and Leonhards offer an intimate insight into the legacies of the Russian Revolution from its earliest idealism through to the brutal Stalinist purges and beyond. Hotel Lux uncovers a world of forgotten radicals who saw their hopes and dreams crash against reality yet retained their faith in a beautiful future for all. Culminating in a queer love story that saw the daughters of the Cohens and Leonhards create an enduring partnership even as their parents political visions crumbled, this is a multi-generational rebel odyssey and a history of international communism, one which looks as much to the future as it does to the past.