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Eddie the Kid
Author(s): Leo Zeilig (Author)
- Publisher: Zero Books
- Publication Date: 29 Mar. 2013
- Language: English
- Print length: 282 pages
- ISBN-10: 1780993676
- ISBN-13: 9781780993676
Book Description
Eddie Bereskin wants to change the world and stop the war, instead his life unravels after he is arrested on a Halloween protest in 2002. An incredible story about loss and hope set in London, Eddie the Kid takes us to the anti-war movement and two generations of activists, where, amid rioting and arrests, the destinies of Eddie and his sister Esther have been shaped.
Editorial Reviews
Review
Academic and writer Leo Zeilig begins his first novel at the gates of Downing Street. It’s late 2002, and activist Eddie Bereskin is borne on shoulders, megaphone in hand, calling Tony Blair a murderer and ordering the crowd to break the police barricade. He is arrested and charged, and as the movements for and against war in Iraq gather steam, falls into a feverish relationship with Rebecca, a beautiful fellow protester, and waits for his court case. Zeilig’s sympathy for Eddie’s convictions is clear, but he isn’t afraid to mock Eddie’s flamboyant solicitor (who wants to rip the f****** head off the global bourgeoisie) or expose the blinkered rage that causes Eddie to turn on Rebecca for shaving her legs. Indeed, Eddie’s fraught family life, overhung by his brutal, charismatic father, is at the heart of this honest and powerful novel. Some rather broad scenes including a sex-shop trip disrupt the pace somewhat, but this passionate, sad and well-told book offers a compelling portrait of a flawed young radical. –James Start in The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/mar/22/eddie-the-kid-zeilig-review
Leo Zeilig’s gripping, vibrant and affecting story of political struggle and psychological upheaval. Written through a series of flashbacks and time shifts, with naked bravura, EDDIE THE KID follows a family of political activists through generations from 1960s Chicago to the London protests in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq war. With brute honesty and tender compassion, Zeilig reveals a cast of compelling characters as damaged and flawed as the world they have set out to change. Charting relationships, resistance, domestic violence, inner conflict, repression, rigged courts, police brutality, street battles…. this is a humane and political novel for our times. –Nicola Field, author of Over the Rainbow
About the Author
Leo Zeilig is currently a senior researcher at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies in London running a project on the life and work of South African revolutionary Ruth First.
