While I loved and enjoyed reading many of these titles, this is not necessarily a Recommendations List or a series of personal political endorsements but a smorgasbord.
I strove for a varied approach to give airtime to some lesser-known works, plus a smattering of options from different eras, geographies, political persuasions, and demographics. I wanted to offer up options for every preference while excluding speculative fiction and sci-fi since those lists already exist.
Many of the books listed below center on explicitly leftist subject matter: strikes, organizing, and the like; others are more subtle in their class struggle themes but written by card-carrying movement members. I tried not to stray too far from the light here and keep the list as thematically relevant as possible. I strongly suspect that some of the most pertinent socialist fiction books are not yet available in English. Many of the books feature dated notions and characters who are unconcerned with what would be politically correct now or then.
Overall, this is a meager resource for those looking to get their heads out of their theory books and into fiction that can offer lessons that would otherwise need to be lived to learn or be felt or for lefties simply looking to cut loose in leisure with literature that resonates with them.
Listed in chronological order, the short descriptions aim to give a brief synopsis that highlights the book’s proximity to leftist content or themes in addition to the author’s relationship to anti-capitalism. If there has been any glaring oversight or misrepresentation of the works, feel free to reach out to me.
Germinal - Zola (1885)
A naturalist/realist tome about a high stakes and militant coal miner’s strike in Northern France. Zola worked in the mines of Deanin as a way to conduct research for the novel. He was a utopian socialist influenced by philosopher Fourier and is considered a major figure of the French liberalization movement. Germinal was considered his masterpiece.
Romance in Marseilles - Claude Mckay (1929)
Lafala wins a lawsuit against a shipping company after losing both of his legs. A story filled with comedy, melodrama, and class consciousness that discusses the topics of disability and pleasure, sex work, and queerness in a black and multi-racial immigrant community in Marseilles. Mckay was central to the Harlem Renaissance and an IWW member (the only org open to Black members at that time) and later went to Russia and worked with the Communist Party there. Upon returning home, he ran into criticism from and conflict with the Stalinist Communist Party and eventually moved to a commune in California and converted to Catholicism.
Daughter of Earth - Agnes Smedley (1929)
This is a mostly autobiographical novel that chronicles the proletarianization of a poor white family and a young woman organizing who goes on to join the Socialist Party, becomes disillusioned with the socialist party, and turns towards anti-colonial organizing and joins the Indian independence movement. Agnes Smedley was a journalist and activist from Missouri who supported the Indian Independence Movement; went on to live in China from 1928-1941 and was later buried in Peking under the epitaph “ Friend of China.”
The Man Who Lived Underground - Richard Wright (1941)
Fred Daniels is wrongly accused of murdering a white woman. The police force a false confession, and Fred escapes through the sewer system and begins to live underground. When he tries to return to live above ground, he finds he has lost his memory as to why he was ever below, and further tragedy ensues. Wright was a member of the American Communist Party and eventual Bureau Chief of an adjacent publication The Daily Worker. He left the Communist Party due to their support for the US entering World War II in 1941.
If He Hollers Let Him Go - Chester Himes (1945)
Referenced in philosopher Frantz Fanon’s work, this protest novel follows a naval shipyard crew leader new to Los Angeles whose future becomes charted by his reactions and struggles with the white supremacy stacked against him. Himes wrote short stories in prison and, after his release, joined the WPA writers’ project with other communists and later became a CIO union member working in shipyards through WWII.
Stalingrad - Vassily Grossman (1952)
800-page epic leading up to and through the battle of Stalingrad following an ensemble cast of communists carrying out their roles on the home front and at war. Grossman’s Life and Fate and Stalingrad were still unreleased at the time of his death, censored by Kruschev for being anti-Soviet. However, his stories were previously nominated for the Stalin Prize briefly before his alleged Menshivik associations surfaced, and he was subsequently removed.
Painter of Our Time - John Berger (1958)
An epistolary novel about a Hungarian artist in exile who discusses the role of the communist artist and the limits of social realism in his diaries before his mysterious disappearance. The publisher withdrew the book at the request of the Congress for Cultural Freedom within a month of publication due to its apologia for Stalin's invasion of Hungary in 1956. Berger is primarily known as an art critic and was never a member of the CPGB but was very closely associated.
God’s Bits of Wood - Ousmane Sembène (1960)
A story about a Senegalese railway strike that flips gender roles on their head across a chorus of characters. The book is anti-colonial in its perspective on the French. The book is based on Sembène’s first-hand experience as a striking rail worker. He later became active in the French trade union movement in Marseilles, joined the Communist Party, and led a strike to stop the shipment of weapons in the French colonial war in Vietnam.
A Grain of Wheat - Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1967)
A novel full of allusion set during the time after the Mau Mau rebellion and nearing freedom from the UK, a village's chosen hero is haunted by a terrible secret. Thiongo’o is a leftist novelist who grew up during the Mau Mau anti-colonial revolt. During his later imprisonment for his opposition to the dictatorship of Daniel Arap Moi, he decided to write only in his native language, Gikuyu, and never in English again.
The Golden Notebook - Doris Lessing (1962)
This Nobel Prize-winning anti-Stalinist doorstopper compiles four distinct but eventually intertwining “notebooks” to tell the story of disillusionment with the British Communist Party 1930-1950 amidst the women’s liberation movement and sexual revolution set in London and Southern Rhodesia. The narrative mirrors Lessing’s own opposition to the Soviet presence in Hungary, which led her to leave party life.
Z - Vassilis Vassilikos (1966)
Published in Greece in 1966 and then banned by 1967, Z is based on the real-life events of socialist legislator Gregory Lambrakis’ political assassination in 1963. Vassilikos himself eventually became a socialist holding office, elected Syriza MP in 2019, and PASOK’s city council candidate in Athens four years prior.
We Want Everything - Nanni Balestrini (1971)
A fictionalized retelling of the Northern Italian strike wave in 1969, where workers marched under the banner of the phrase “We Want Everything.” The book follows a young worker who joins the movement that leads to a months-long strike. Balestrini was arrested along with other writers and activists associated with Autonomy after this book was published and subsequently went underground. He has since returned to Rome and works on a monthly cultural magazine.
In the Fog of the Seasons’ End - Alex La Guma (1972)
The novel follows protagonists Beukes and Elias, organizers of the underground anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, in their day-to-day organizing grind, suddenly eclipsed by their capture by police. La Guma was born in Cape Town, a Young Communist League member, and later joined the South African Communist Party in 1948. He lived in exile for the rest of his life after losing a racially motivated treason trial. He was chief representative of the African National Congress in the Caribbean when he passed away in Cuba.
Vida - Marge Piercy (1979)
Titular heroine, Vida, was a member of a 1960s Weather Underground-esque group and is now a fugitive when the story begins in 1979. It is told in flashbacks to the 60s as the main character, now underground, can’t shake the feeling she is still being followed while still carrying out illegal action for the skeleton crew of the revolutionary network. Piercy was in the SDS during its heyday, and this book is filled with detailed fictional retellings of faction fights, love triangles, and meeting vibes.
The Salt Eaters - Toni Cade Bambara (1980)
An ensemble cast of faith healers, civil rights activists, party members, and workers explore the healing properties of salt in their suburban Georgia community in this experimental novel by black liberation and socialist feminist activist Bambara. Bambara participated in several different organizations and traveled to Cuba to study women’s political collectives. She later went on to co-found the Southern Collective of African American Writers.
Nisanit - Fadia Faqir (1987)
Three plot lines intertwine to show the Arab-Israeli conflicts through the eyes of Shadeed, the brave Palestinian guerrilla fighter; David, his guilt-riddled Israeli interrogator; and Iman, the young Arab woman from a family left socio-politically shunned after the Black September coup, who is in love with Shadeed. Faqir is a creative writing professor and human rights activist.
No Telephone to Heaven - Michelle Cliff (1987)
Cliff’s sequel to her debut Abeng (1984) follows the same heroine, Clare Savage, who feels called to reconcile her identities in connection to her colonized hometown— Kingston, Jamaica, after years spent in the US and UK while offering rich subplots that focus on revenge, sex, and gender that all coalesce toward a moment of revolutionary action. Cliff sees writing as an act of defiance stating, “[Art] means also, I think, mixing in the forms taught us by the oppressor, undermining his language and co-opting his style, and turning it to our purpose.”
Nervous Conditions - Tsi Tsi Dangarembga (1988)
A feminist coming-of-age story about a girl who goes to live with her wealthy uncle to attend school only thanks to the timely death of her older brother. Centered on race and class during the colonial period of present-day Zimbabwe, the book does not discuss socialist organizing directly. However, Dangarembga was involved with the Movement for Democratic Change party, the democratic socialist left opposition to the ruling party until she became disillusioned in 2010.
Friend - Nam-nyong Paek (1992)
A story of a divorce that demonstrates how preserving the family unit takes a village in the DPRK. Marital troubles are viewed as a community concern that requires collective deliberation and resolution, as depicted in this non-traditional love story that was a part of the state’s Hidden Heroes campaign. Paek is a member of the Chagang Province Writers Union and was later invited by the Central Committee of the Writers Union to join the April 15 Literary Production Unit in Pyongyang.
Stone Butch Blues - Leslie Feinberg (1993)
A seminal transgender Marxist historical fiction novel about gender non-conformity in 1970s Buffalo, NY, that follows the main character through instances of love, trauma, and activism — union organizing, unofficial weddings, direct action, and police brutality. Feinberg, a blue-collar worker, was a member of the Workers World Party, and hir* activism ranged from participating in a national tour about HIV/AIDS to mobilizing against the KKK.
The Return of the Water Spirit - Pepetela (1995)
A socialist politician doesn’t realize she has become an exploitative capitalist while her husband plays computer games as the Angolan city collapses around them. This novel is Pepetela’s, a veteran of the armed struggle to free Angola, critique of the bourgeois-fication of the MPLA after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Total Chaos - Jean-Claude Izzo (1995)
A suburban cop traverses the bridge between the law and the seedy underbelly of Marseilles to avenge his childhood friends’ deaths and uncovers the two worlds are intertwined by corruption. Izzo is a former Communist Party member who resigned during the 1970s after the Socialist-Communist alliance failed.
Shantytown - Cesar Aira (2002)
Maxi, a middle-class and swole young man, uses his gym rat strength to help the trash pickers of a Buenos Aires shantytown. A murderous police officer is desperate to break a drug ring in the slum, and all at once, their worlds collide, highlighting the obvious class tensions and tensions between the two main interlopers of the shantytown. I found it difficult to find a record of Aira’s exact political leanings; he was arrested outside of a political meeting and spent time in jail in 1971. He has somewhat famously criticized other writers for being too frivolous and not highlighting social and economic realities.
Maggie Terry - Sarah Schulman (2018)
Donald Trump is president, ex-NYPD officer Maggie Terry just got out of rehab, and in her new career as a private investigator, embarks to find out who strangled a local actress, all while experiencing Black Lives Matter and an ever-gentrifying city in the backdrop. Schulman is a gay activist and AIDs historian who was inspired to write this story after teaching at Staten Island College, where her students were all very connected to the NYPD in their communities.
The Treasure of the Spanish Civil War - Serge Pey (2020)
A series of vignettes about life during and after Spain’s fascist regime in the 30s and 40s depicting small acts of resistance and resilience: a man plants a fruit tree for each of his assassinated comrades; a professor hides a secret library of banned books. Pey was born in Toulouse to a working-class family of Catalan refugees and went on to organize against the Vietnam War and took part in the May 68 movement.