Sell Us the Rope Spiral-Bound | March 7, 2023

“A deeply satisfying novel. Incisive, inventive, frequently very funny.” —The Guardian

In 1907, 27-year-old Stalin is attending the 5th Congress of the Russian Communist Party in a completely immersive, gritty pre-war London. There Koba—as he is known—works with the likes of Lenin, Trotsky, and Rosa Luxemburg, and develops an intense but dangerous relationship with a vivacious FInnish activist name Elli Vuokko.
Navigating between the Tsar’s secret police and the Communist Party’s suspicions, Stalin forges alliances in the Bolshevik wing of the party while struggling to shake off his impoverished, violent past and to step into a future that will make him one of the world’s most infamous dictators.
Called “superb” and “intelligent” by The Financial Times, May’s portrait reveals the intense manipulation, the keen ambition, and the daring that reshaped Russia into the Soviet Union, and ultimately remade the world.