Round-up – All the President's Classics
Ten antidotes to Trump's inauguration
Today at 12pm in Washington, D.C., President Donald Trump will be sworn in for the second time as the President of the United States of America.
Whether you feel like celebrating, escaping or stewing on the future of global politics, here are ten classic works of fiction that may be just what you are – or what you’re not – looking for.
Mr. President by Miguel Ángel Asturias (1946)
In an unnamed country, an egomaniacal dictator schemes to dispose of a political adversary and maintain his grip on power. As tyranny takes hold, everyone is forced to choose between compromise and death. Inspired by life under the regime of President Manuel Estrada Cabrera of Guatemala, where it was banned for many years, and infused with exuberant lyricism, Mayan symbolism, and Guatemalan vernacular, Nobel Prize-winner Miguel Ángel Asturias’s magnum opus is at once a surrealist masterpiece, a blade-sharp satire of totalitarianism, and a gripping portrait of psychological terror.
UK: W&N | 288 pages | translated by Frances Partridge
US: Penguin Classics | 320 pages | translated by David Unger | foreword by Mario Vargas Llosa | introduction by Gerald Martin
The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon (1959)
Sgt. Raymond Shaw is a hero of the first order. He’s an ex-prisoner of war who saved the life of his entire outfit, a winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor, the stepson of an influential senator . . . and the perfect assassin. Brainwashed during his time as a POW he is a ‘sleeper’, a living weapon to be triggered by a secret signal. He will act without question, no matter what order he is made to carry out. To stop Shaw, his former commanding officer must uncover the truth behind a twisted conspiracy of torture, betrayal and power that will lead both to the highest levels of the government.
UK / US: Orion | 368 pages
Libra by Don DeLillo (1988)
A troubled adolescent endlessly riding New York’s subway cars, Lee Harvey Oswald enters adulthood believing himself to be an agent of history. This makes him fair game to a pair of discontented CIA operatives convinced that a failed attempt on the life of the US president will force the nation to tackle the threat of communism head on. Libra is a gripping, masterful blend of fact and fiction, laying bare the wounded American psyche and the dark events that still torment it.
UK: Penguin Essentials | 464 pages
US: Penguin | 480 pages
The Comedians by Graham Greene (1966)
Three men meet on a ship bound for Haiti, a world in the grip of the corrupt ‘Papa Doc’ and the Tontons Macoute, his sinister secret police. Brown the hotelier, Smith the US presidential candidate and Jones the confidence man - these are the ‘comedians’ of Graham Greene’s title. Hiding behind their actors’ masks, they hesitate on the edge of life. And, to begin with, they are men afraid of love, afraid of pain, afraid of fear itself . . .
UK: Vintage Classics | 320 pages | introduced by Paul Theroux
US: Penguin Classics | 320 pages | introduced by Paul Theroux
It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis (1935)
A vain, outlandish, anti-immigrant, fearmongering demagogue runs for President of the United States - and wins. Sinclair Lewis’s chilling 1935 bestseller is the story of Buzz Windrip, ‘Professional Common Man’, who promises poor, angry voters that he will make America proud and prosperous once more, but takes the country down a far darker path. As the new regime slides into authoritarianism, newspaper editor Doremus Jessup can’t believe it will last - but is he right? This cautionary tale of liberal complacency in the face of populist tyranny shows it really can happen here.
UK: Penguin Modern Classics | 384 pages
US: Signet Classics | 444 pages | introduction by Michael Meyer | afterword by Gary Scharnhorst
The Autumn of the Patriarch by Gabriel García Márquez (1975)
As the citizens of an unnamed Caribbean nation creep through dusty corridors in search of their tyrannical leader, they cannot comprehend that the frail and withered man lying dead on the floor can be the self-styled General of the Universe. Their arrogant, manically violent leader, known for serving up traitors to dinner guests and drowning young children at sea, can surely not die the humiliating death of a mere mortal? Tracing the demands of a man whose egocentric excesses mask the loneliness of isolation and whose lies have become so ingrained that they are indistinguishable from truth, Márquez has created a fantastical portrait of despotism that rings with an air of reality.
UK: Penguin Books | 240 pages | translated by Gregory Rabassa
US: Harper Perennial Modern Classics | 255 pages | translated by Gregory Rabassa
The Plot Against America by Philip Roth (2004)
When celebrity aviator, Charles A. Lindbergh, wins the 1940 presidential election on the slogan of ‘America First’, fear invades every Jewish household. Not only has Lindbergh blamed the Jews for pushing America towards war with Germany, he has negotiated an ‘understanding’ with the Nazis promising peace between the two nations. Growing up in the ‘ghetto’ of Newark, Philip Roth recounts his childhood caught in the stranglehold of this counterfactual nightmare. As America sinks into its own dark metamorphosis and Jewish families are torn apart, fear and uncertainty spread. Who really is President Lindbergh? And to what end has he hijacked America?
UK: Vintage Classics | 400 pages
US: Vintage | 391 pages
Seeing by José Saramago (2004)
On election day in the capital, it is raining so hard that no one has bothered to come out to vote. The politicians are growing jittery. Should they reschedule the elections for another day? Around three o’clock, the rain finally stops. Promptly at four, voters rush to the polling stations, as if they had been ordered to appear. But when the ballots are counted, more than 70 percent are blank. The citizens are rebellious. A state of emergency is declared. But are the authorities acting too precipitously? Or even blindly? The word evokes terrible memories of the plague of blindness that hit the city four years before, and of the one woman who kept her sight. Could she be behind the blank ballots? A police superintendent is put on the case. What begins as a satire on governments and the sometimes dubious efficacy of the democratic system turns into something far more sinister.
UK: Vintage Classics | 320 pages | translated by Margaret Jull Costa
US: Mariner Books Classics | 320 pages | translated by Margaret Jull Costa
Memories of the Ford Administration by John Updike (1992)
When historian Alfred “Alf” Clayton is invited by an academic journal to record his impressions of the Gerald R. Ford Administration (1974–77), he recalls not the political events of the time but rather a turbulent period of his own sexual past. Alf’s highly idiosyncratic contribution to Retrospect consists not only of reams of unbuttoned personal history but also of pages from an unpublished chronicle of the presidency of James Buchanan (1857–61). The alternating texts mirror each other and tell a story in counterpoint, a frequently hilarious comedy of manners contrasting the erotic etiquette and social dictions of antebellum Washington with those of late-twentieth-century southern New Hampshire.
UK: Penguin Modern Classics | 400 pages
US: Random House | 416 pages
All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren (1946)
All the King’s Men is considered the finest novel ever written on American politics. Set in the 1930s, this book traces the rise and fall of Willie Stark, who resembles the real-life Huey ‘Kingfish’ Long of Louisiana. Stark begins his political career as an idealistic man of the people but soon becomes corrupted by success.
UK: Penguin Modern Classics | 672 pages
US: Mariner Books Classics | 672 pages | foreword by Joseph Blotner
What other presidential classics would you recommend? Let me know in a comment below.
And a final thought . . . The website Quartz reported in December 2016 that President Trump has publicly mentioned liking just three works of fiction: All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, Hidden Mirrors by Donna Marie and The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand.
Apparently Trump identifies with Howard Roark, the main character in The Fountainhead. Rand’s novel ‘relates to business, beauty, life and inner emotions,’ says Trump. ‘That book relates to . . . everything.’ So another way to make sense of today’s events might be to pick up a copy of The Fountainhead.
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (1943)
Architect Howard Roark is as unyielding as the granite he blasts to build with. Defying the conventions of the world around him, he embraces a battle over two decades against a double-dealing crew of rivals who will stop at nothing to bring him down. These include, perhaps most troublesome of all, the ambitious Dominique Francon, who may just prove to be Roarke’s equal. This epic story of money, power and a man’s struggle to succeed on his own terms is a paean to individualism and humanity’s creative potential.
UK: Penguin Modern Classics | 752 pages
US: Signet Classics | 720 pages | afterword by Leonard Peikoff
I recommend
’s recent discussion with about Ayn Rand – and her other magnum opus Atlas Shrugged.
The book descriptions above are taken from the publishers’ online blurbs.
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The two I've read, the Roth and the Penn Warren, were both excellent. A very interesting list. Thank you.
Great list. The Comedians is particularly dark given Haiti later history. All are worth are re-reading. Thank you for putting the list together. For truly uninspiring leadership check out Agamemnon in the Iliad and based on the Rest is History podcast he doesn’t improve in Euripides.