‘If affection is the first ground of memory, the archive is its late flowering and Hotel Lux its conservatory, Casey’s history a tender nurture of pasts we overlook, but which whisper to us all the same’ Irish Times
RTÉ Culture Book of the Week
‘Tells the story of early 20th century communism through the eyes of those who lived it and felt and believed in it – while also living their entirely normal, rackety, emotional lives’ Hallie Rubenhold, author of The Five
Hotel Lux follows Irish radical May O’Callaghan and her friends, three revolutionary families brought together by their vision for a communist future and their time spent in the Comintern’s Moscow living quarters, the Hotel Lux.
Historian Maurice Casey reveals the connections and disconnections of a group of forgotten communist activists whose lives collided in 1920s Moscow: a brilliant Irish translator, a maverick author, the rebel daughters of an East London Jewish family, and a family of determined German anti-fascists.
The dramatic and interlocking histories of the O’Flahertys, Cohens and Leonhards offer an intimate insight into the legacies of the Russian Revolution from its earliest idealism through to the brutal Stalinist purges and beyond. Hotel Lux uncovers a world of forgotten radicals who saw their hopes and dreams crash against reality yet retained their faith in a beautiful future for all.
Culminating in a queer love story that saw the daughters of the Cohens and Leonhards create an enduring partnership even as their parents’ political visions crumbled, this is a multi-generational rebel odyssey and a history of international communism, one which looks as much to the future as it does to the past.
‘An extraordinary trip through 20th century history, grounded in the singular characters occupying a single hotel in 1920s Moscow. Tracing its path from the suffragettes, through the world wars, and on to the bright optimism of communism’s surely soon-to-be-radiant future, this is a fascinating tale of exiles and emigres, zealots and dreamers, brought to thrumming life by an extraordinary cache of private letters, and Casey’s superb and propulsive portraiture. A historical, and humane, tour de force.’ – SÉAMAS O’REILLY
‘Beautifully written and researched. Full of the fire of curiosity and the magic of discovery, Hotel Lux is a book that uncovers the radical in the everyday, the everyday in the radical.’ – SEÁN HEWITT
‘Tells the story of early 20th century communism through the eyes of those who lived it and felt and believed in it – while also living their entirely normal, rackety, emotional lives.’ – HALLIE RUBENHOLD, author of The Five
‘Hotel Lux illuminates the intertwined lives of a group of self-described “restless souls with impossible desires”, moving between a legendary Moscow hotel, Weimar Berlin, 1920s Manhattan, London’s East End and the west of Ireland. Maurice Casey writes with vivid empathy and his impressive research skills uncover complex networks of politics, ideology and love. A remarkably accomplished reconstruction of a forgotten world, its ideals, disappointments and delusions.’ – ROY FOSTER, Emeritus Professor of Irish History, University of Oxford
‘I loved this book. I love these women. Casey deftly interweaves their stories with the struggles across Europe of the day (many of which still echo today). A story of ordinary people attempting the extraordinary: to follow their dream of building a more just world. Casey brings the voices of these women bang up front and allows us to know them in a real and rounded way. There’s also great humour and lightness of touch not always found in such an impeccably researched historical account.’ – TARA FLYNN
‘Hotel Lux is an enthralling debut, from a brilliant young scholar, that finds the messy, honest humanity at the heart of an epic ideological tsunami. Through his many years of dogged research, Dr Maurice Casey has carefully and generously revived a doomed generation of extraordinary friends, lovers, neighbours, comrades and family-members whose fizzing revolutionary idealism was slowly crushed between the jaws of Stalinism and Nazism. Not only is it a compelling narrative, Casey thrills us by revealing the secrets of the historian’s craft; suddenly we’re with him in the Moscow archives, or rummaging through boxes in unexpected attics, or bulk-emailing strangers who share a surname, or tweeting random Spaniards in the hunt for living descendants of forgotten radicals. Hotel Lux is clearly a labour of love, and finds room for unexpected hope amongst the eventual tragedy. I certainly hope this is the beginning of an illustrious career for its talented author.’ – GREG JENNER
‘Maurice Casey’s Hotel Lux is a rich and bracing work that brings to fresh light a fascinating new contour in the history of transcontinental communism.’ – ADRIAN DUNCAN
‘Casey takes us inside the fabled Hotel Lux, a place where revolutionaries, dreamers and agitators shared food, beds and doctrine, and reveals in exquisite detail how this Moscow building became a crucible in which ideals were tested, and lives forever entwined.’ – SIMON PARKIN
‘Casey is a dazzling new voice in Irish writing. Hotel Lux is an extraordinary debut, one that weaves together years of research to create a rich tapestry of the ordinary lives of forgotten revolutionaries. There’s real beauty here, as stories of Moscow’s Hotel Lux burst from the page to begin their afterlives in reader’s imaginations. It’s astoundingly brilliant, propulsive, compulsive, and deeply moving. I couldn’t put it down once I checked into the Hotel Lux. It’s an outstanding debut.’ – Aimée Walsh
‘Told in novelistic prose and narrated like an archival detective story, this enchants’ – starred review, Publishers Weekly
‘If affection is the first ground of memory, the archive is its late flowering and Hotel Lux its conservatory, Casey’s history a tender nurture of pasts we overlook, but which whisper to us all the same’ – Irish Times
‘Historian Maurice J Casey has a novelist’s eye and a detective’s instinct; talents that transform what might seem like a niche story into a compelling thriller. The sweep of his research and his discoveries are breathtaking’ – Irish Examiner
Maurice J. Casey is a historian based at Queen’s University Belfast. His work focuses on the history of modern Ireland, queer history, and the history of international communism in the interwar world. He holds degrees from Trinity College Dublin, Cambridge University and the University of Oxford, where he completed his doctoral studies in 2020. He was a Fulbright Scholar at Stanford University from 2018 to 2019. His writing has appeared in a variety of publications including History Today, the Irish Times and Tribune magazine. Hotel Lux: An Intimate History of Communism’s Forgotten Radicals will be his first book.
