The Gadfly: The revolutionary best-seller which inspired Adam Curtis's Can't Get You Out of My Head

Product Description "The most exciting novel I have ever read" - Bertrand Russell "At the end of the nineteenth century, Ethel Boole [Voynich] had gone to Russia as a young girl and become involved with the revolutionaries in Saint Petersburg. She wrote a novel called The Gadfly - it told a powerful, romantic story of a young girl who sacrificed everything for revolution. Without realising it, [Voynich] had become a hero of the Russian revolution ... her novel inspired millions of young revolutionaries in the 1920s to rise up and fight for the revolution, inspired by the idea of surrendering themselves to a grand historic cause. Then the same had happened in China - again, millions of young revolutionaries had carried The Gadfly in their backpacks, as they fought to create a new kind of future." - Adam Curtis, Can't Get You Out of My Head; An Emotional History of the Modern World"Masterpiece of story telling" - The New York Times Review "The most exciting novel I have ever read" - Bertrand Russell "At the end of the nineteenth century, Ethel Boole [Voynich] had gone to Russia as a young girl and become involved with the revolutionaries in Saint Petersburg. She wrote a novel called The Gadfly - it told a powerful, romantic story of a young girl who sacrificed everything for revolution. Without realising it, [Voynich] had become a hero of the Russian revolution ... her novel inspired millions of young revolutionaries in the 1920s to rise up and fight for the revolution, inspired by the idea of surrendering themselves to a grand historic cause. Then the same had happened in China - again, millions of young revolutionaries had carried The Gadfly in their backpacks, as they fought to create a new kind of future." - Adam Curtis, Can't Get You Out of My Head; An Emotional History of the Modern World"Masterpiece of story telling" - The New York Times About the Author Living quietly in New York, completely forgotten, was an Irish woman called Ethel Boole ... Boole thought that the way to change the world was to give yourself up to the force of revolution, to surrender your individual self and your identity to the dream of a better future for others. At the end of the nineteenth century, Ethel Boole had gone to Russia as a young girl and become involved with the revolutionaries in Saint Petersburg, and she wrote a novel called The Gadfly. It told a powerful, romantic story of a young girl who sacrified everything for revolution. She then married a Polish revolutionary called Wilfrid Voynich, and in the 1920s they went to live in New York, where he worked as an antiquarian bookseller and Ethel Boole forgot about revolution. But in 1959, when the Bolshoi Ballet came to New York the dancers were astonished to find that she was alive, and they rushed to visit her - because Ethel Boole, without her realising it, had become a hero of the Russian revolution. She discovered that her novel had inspired millions of young revolutionaries in the 1920s to rise up and fight for the revolution, inspired by the idea of surrendering themselves to a grand historic cause. Then the same had happened in China. Again, millions of young revolutions had carried The Gadfly in their backpacks, as they fought to create a new kind of future. - Adam Curtis, Can't Get You Out of My Head: An Emotional History of the Modern WorldEthel Lilian Voynich, née Boole (11 May 1864 - 27 July 1960) was an Irish novelist and musician, and a supporter of several revolutionary causes. She was born in Cork, but grew up in Lancashire, England. Voynich was a significant figure, not only on the late Victorian literary scene, but also in Russian émigré circles. She is best known for her novel The Gadfly, which became hugely popular in her lifetime, especially in Russia and China.