Writers and regimes

This file gathers the authors and film-makers in the catalogue whose commitment to a regime or a colonial enterprise is documented: collaboration, membership, official position, service in an administration. The fact is stated in the entry with its source, without comment or judgement, together with how the work is received today, which ranges from a literary prize still awarded to a statue pulled down. Bringing them together shows how far the question crosses languages, centuries and camps.

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• PoetryThe Story of BalladeädroGeorge Gordon McCrae · 1867The abduction of a young Aboriginal woman, told in English verse after a history of the colony.Literature
• NovelHungerSultKnut Hamsun · 1890A novel of 1890 in which the narrative leaves events behind to follow, minute by minute, a starving consciousness.LiteraturePublic domain
• NovelThe Death of the GodsСмерть богов. Юлиан ОтступникDmitry Merezhkovsky · 1895The first part of a novel trilogy, published in 1895: a fourth-century Roman emperor wants to restore paganism against Christianity.LiteraturePublic domain
• PoetryLabor and the AngelDuncan Campbell Scott · 1898Second verse collection by a poet from Ottawa, in which his first sonnets on Iroquois subjects appear.LiteraturePublic domain
• NovelRed RockThomas Nelson Page · 1898A generation after Reconstruction, the white South imposes on the rest of the country its version of those years, that of a dispossession suffered. This novel is one of its pieces.LiteraturePublic domain
• Short storiesThe Charles MenKarolinernaVerner von Heidenstam · 1898At the beginning of the eighteenth century, a warrior king leads his soldiers, and with them his country, into an endless war.LiteraturePublic domain
• PoetryUrbi et OrbiValery Bryusov · 1903not translated into EnglishA poetry collection from 1903, arranged by genre, in which the city and social misery take on a new place.LiteraturePublic domain
• PoetryBiķerisEdvarts Virza · 1907not translated into EnglishLatvia in 1907, in the aftermath of a crushed revolution, where a young poet publishes verses of desire.LiteraturePublic domain
• NovelStonecropEmberek a kövek közöttCécile Tormay · 1911In the Croatian Karst, a wild shepherdess and a railway employee from Hungary fall in love among the rocks.LiteraturePublic domain
• NovelAz elsodort faluDezső Szabó · 1919not translated into EnglishA Székely village before and during the Great War, where the author places in the peasants the country's only hope.LiteraturePublic domain
• PoetryGeomeetriline inimeneJohannes Vares-Barbarus · 1924not translated into EnglishPoems from 1924 that make man a geometric figure, in the age of machines and the great city.Literature
• NovelCities and YearsГорода и годыKonstantin Fedin · 1924A novel of 1924: a young Russian artist caught between wartime Germany and revolutionary Russia.Literature
• TheatreSkirgailaVincas Krėvė-Mickevičius · 1925not translated into EnglishThe last days of pagan Lithuania, caught between Poland, the Teutonic Order and baptism.LiteraturePublic domain
• TheatrePustolov pred vratimaMilan Begović · 1926not translated into EnglishA dream play, in which the whole world fits into a sickroom and what knocks at the door has no name.Literature
• CinemaCafé ElektricGustav Ucicky · 1927A silent melodrama of the Viennese underworld, in which a girl from a good family is ruined for a thief, in a café where people meet.Cinema
• CinemaTroll-elgenWalter Fyrst · 1927A poor hunter must kill an elk said to be a ghost in order to win the daughter of a rich peasant.Cinema
• NovelŽivý bičMilo Urban · 1927not translated into EnglishA Slovak village far from the front, transformed from within by the Great War.Literature
• NovelThe Virgin of SkalholtSkálholtGuðmundur Kamban · 1930A drama of love and authority in episcopal Iceland in the seventeenth century, drawn from a real case.Literature
• PoetryJord og jernRolf Jacobsen · 1933not translated into EnglishA first book in free verse, in which nature and machines enter the poem in equal measure.Literature
• NovelJozef MakJozef Cíger-Hronský · 1933The life of a simple man from the Slovak countryside, who endures everything without breaking.Literature
• NovelMütterKarl Heinrich Waggerl · 1935not translated into EnglishA novel of a peasant village in which women and mothers play the leading role, published three years before its author joined the Nazi party.Literature
• PoetryProljetna svitanjaVinko Nikolić · 1935not translated into EnglishThe first book of a poet whom the defeat of 1945 will drive away for forty-six years, and whose main work will later be a journal.Literature
• NovelŽemė maitintojaPetras Cvirka · 1935not translated into EnglishA former volunteer who has become a settler under the land reform, whose hopes run up against debt.Literature
• NovelThe Good ShepherdAdventGunnar Gunnarsson · 1936An Icelandic shepherd in the winter mountains, and what the duty owed to lost animals costs.Literature
• PoetryMladý svadobníkRudolf Dilong · 1936not translated into EnglishA Franciscan monk who states his faith in an avant-garde language, between fervour and sensuality.Literature
• CinemaThe Tyrant FatherO Pai TiranoAntónio Lopes Ribeiro · 1941A salesman in love hides from the woman he loves that he performs on the stage, because she swears only by the cinema.Cinema
• PoetryŽofiaValentín Beniak · 1941not translated into EnglishA great visionary poem written at the beginning of the Second World War, between dream and disaster.Literature
• CinemaTitanicHerbert Selpin · 1943The 1912 sinking told by Nazi cinema as the work of British greed, with a German officer as its hero.Cinema
• CinemaThe Great SacrificeOpfergangVeit Harlan · 1944A man torn between his wife and a neighbour condemned by illness, in a colour melodrama shot in Hamburg.Cinema
• NovelZaļā zemeAndrejs Upīts · 1945not translated into EnglishThe countryside of Skrīveri, where the author grew up, seen again from afar during the war.Literature
• CinemaL'Équateur aux cent visagesAndré Cauvin · 1948The Belgian Congo filmed by a director living among its inhabitants, between wildlife, forest and rites.Cinema
• PoetryPoeem StalinileJuhan Smuul · 1949not translated into EnglishA long poem in praise of the Soviet leader, written in 1949 by an islander of twenty-seven.Literature
• NovelWho if I Cry OutLições de abismoGustavo Corção · 1950A novel in the form of the diary of a man condemned by illness, who questions his life and death.Literature
• PoetryFleurs de latériteFrançois Sengat-Kuo · 1954not translated into EnglishPoems of anger by a Cameroonian student in Paris, in the time of the anticolonial struggle.Literature
• NovelThe DemonsDie DämonenHeimito von Doderer · 1956Vienna in the twenties in a chronicle with several voices, where private lives meet the rise of political violence.Literature
• CinemaEn 50 ansGérard de Boe · 1958Half a century of colonisation in Katanga, told from the arrival of new miners to the schools and hospitals.Cinema
• NovelDlhý čas čakaniaVladimír Mináč · 1958not translated into EnglishA generation of young Slovaks confronts the wartime state, before the uprising.Literature
• NovelUna lanza por el BoabíDaniel Jones Mathama · 1962not translated into EnglishSix years before independence, a Fernandino from Barcelona publishes a novel of manners that praises Spain's colonial work.Literature
• NarrativeЖили-былиViktor Shklovsky · 1966not translated into EnglishA 1966 book of memoirs: a literary theorist recounts his life and his friends, from childhood to 1964.Literature
• PoetryPól-la d'anánta katánta parántaJosé Coronel Urtecho · 1970not translated into EnglishHalf a century of verse by a master of the Nicaraguan avant-garde, who places what he translated among what he wrote.Literature
• Short storiesA 6714-es személySándor Tar · 1981not translated into EnglishIn a carriage full of drunks and in their homes, commuters talk, and their mingled voices make up the book.Literature
• NarrativeMemorias de un cortesano de la Era de TrujilloJoaquín Balaguer · 1988not translated into EnglishThe account of a life spent in the service of power, with one page deliberately left blank.Literature