Shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards 2024: History Book of the Year
‘Hotel Lux is an unforgettable book, bringing to life not only its protagonists but an entire world, and offering a new glimpse of a vanished past’ Sally Rooney
‘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
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.
‘Hotel Lux is an unforgettable book, bringing to life not only its protagonists but an entire world, and offering a new glimpse of a vanished past’ – Sally Rooney
‘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
‘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
‘Told in novelistic prose and narrated like an archival detective story, this enchants’ – starred review, Publishers Weekly
‘Hotel Lux is a wonderfully human biography. It reminds us that humans exist in and for their dreams and that for many of us, those dreams include a better and more just world for everyone’ – Ron Jacobs, Counterpunch
‘In Casey’s rendering of these lives, the intellectual and political project of communism comes alive as a vast human project designed to reshape humanity’ – Los Angeles Review of Books
‘Hotel Lux is an unexpected treasure, unveiling the power of the archive to reanimate history and its complexities’ – Huw Lemmey, Tribune
‘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
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 is his first book.
