Literature Group: New 2026 Monthly Series
Meets monthly on Saturdays, 2-4 pm ET, beginning February 28
The MEP Literature Group hosts a new monthly series, meeting on the last Saturday of the month between 2 and 4 pm. In our new format, each month we discuss a single book, not limited to fiction and branching out to memoir, biography, essay and other literary forms that investigate and challenge literary norms. We encourage participants to recommend books and topics. (Note that the weekly Aesthetics of Resistance series will also continue for now).
February 28 Victor Serge: Unruly Revolutionary, by Mitchell Abidor (Las Vegas, NV: Pluto Press, 2025, 424 pages). On November 3, 2025, Mitchell spoke on how his biography of Victor Serge could disturb readers with their romantic view of Serge’s dissidence. We will now discuss how this biography brings out the difficulties of Serge’s living within defeat and poverty and if the reportage changes our feelings towards Serge’s novels.
March 28 My Country, Africa: Autobiography of the Black Pasionaria, by Andrée Blouin in collaboration with Jean MacKellar. (New York: Verso Books, 2025, 288 pages). We suggest reading this book while streaming Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat. The Lit Group has read a number of fictions set in Africa; Ms Blouin’s memoir gives background onto the turbulent postcolonial period and the unrecognized contributions of women to the revolutionary movement.
April 25 Faraway the Southern Sky: A Novel, by Joseph Andreas. (New York: Verso Press, 2024, 82 pages). A narrator walks through contemporary Paris, identifying the locations where a young Vietnamese refugee/revolutionary lived and worked through a city marked by rebellions and massacres. This novel will resonate with MEP members who read The Sorrow of War.
May 30 The Art of Asking Your Boss for a Raise, by George Perec. (New York: Verso Books, 2025, 80 pages). All wage slaves resent the humiliation of the yearly self-evaluation to justify the request for a pay raise. Perec, a noted literary avant-gardist and member of Oulipo, had a lowly job as a library clerk that he used to advantage when IBM asked for writers to experiment with computer algorithms.
June 27 Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende’s Chile, by Eden Medina. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014, 326 pages). Allende’s Chile attempted not only a political change, but a technological change. As we deal with the AI Bros proclaiming a world of their own making, this study of a socialist government applying technology provides an alternative.
July 29 The Glass Key, by Dashiell Hammett. (Various publishers). Published in 1930, Dashiell Hammet wrote a scathing description of small-town corruption when capitalism supported local economies and power elites. The novel has inspired many movies, all worth watching and worth discussing in this session.
Convened by Jacqueline Cantwell and the MEP Literature Group. Jacqueline became involved with the MEP’s Literature Group because of her love of Victor Serge’s novels. Participating in an MEP reading group led by Serge translator Richard Greeman eight years ago, Jacqueline found a community of readers eager to be challenged by the ambitions of international writers devoted to the creative potential of political fiction. Since the death of Michael Lardner, who hosted and organized the Literature Group for so many years, Jacqueline has taken the lead in furthering the group’s goals of exploring international fiction and encouraging thoughtful conversation.