Engineers of Human Souls by Simon Ings

NEW DEALS

Praise for STALIN AND THE SCIENTISTS

Ings’s research is impressive and his exposition of the science is lucid… a lively and interesting book, and utterly relevant today – Simon Sebag Montefiore, NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

Endlessly entertaining… An amusing book… [Ings’s] storytelling skill is everywhere evident; the book… is lively, dramatic, intriguing, and often very funny – TIMES (UK)

Four writers. Four dictators. One world, changed out of all recognition…

ENGINEERS OF HUMAN SOULS is an intimate and shocking shadow history of creative vanity in a time that turned writers – once the faithful servants of authority – into figures of political consequence.

Gabriele D’Annunzio, whose poetry became a blueprint for fascism in Italy. Maxim Gorky, dramatist of the working class and Stalin's cheerleader. Joseph Goebbels, a hopeless novelist but, under Hitler, an inspired propagandist. Ding Ling whose every story served the Maoist regime that kept her imprisoned for years.

Not one of them was suited to vast undertakings. D’Annunzio couldn’t amass the small change necessary for postage stamps, but took over a city. Gorky, a stranger to tact, tried to outmanoeuvre Stalin. Goebbels couldn’t keep his own wife faithful, but managed to persuade children to fight and die in the Third Reich’s hopeless last stand. Ding Ling survived Mao’s Cultural Revolution mostly by refusing to believe that it applied to her.

All four nursed extravagant visions of the future, and believed they were vital to its realization. Each was lured to the centre of political action. Each established a dangerous and damaging relationship with a notorious dictator. And when writers and rulers find a use for each other, the consequences can be shattering for us all.

In a democratized, post-literary firmament supported on the pillars of social media, we are now all like these ‘useful idiots'. We all, whether we know it or not, wield the power once wielded by Gorky, Ding Ling, D’Annunzio and Goebbels. These stories – of courage and compromise, vanity and malevolence – speak urgently to our present condition.

SIMON INGS is the author of eight previous novels and two works of nonfiction, including the Baillie Gifford-longlisted STALIN AND THE SCIENTISTS (Faber). He is also the editor of the recent anthology WE, ROBOTS: Artificial Intelligence in 100 Stories (Head of Zeus, 2020). His debut novel HOT HEAD was widely acclaimed. He is the former arts editor of New Scientist magazine and lives in London.

Agent: Peter Tallack

Publisher: Bridge Street Press/Little, Brown Delivery: Autumn 2022 Publication: Autumn 2023 Status: Proposal Length: 90,000 words

All rights available excluding UK & Commonwealth (Bridge Street Press)