Novels by Milton Wolff

In Another Hill Wolff brings the war in Spain to life; in A Member of the Working Class he explores the forces that brought protagonist Mitch Castle (and by extension, Wolff himself) to Spain; and in The Premature Antifascist he tells the story of Mitch Castle's return to the U.S. and struggle to get to the front in World War II.
   Once better known for his politics than for his prose, Milton Wolff has shown that he is a serious writer as well as a committed fighter.

Another Hill

 

Another Hill follows two American volunteers, Mitch Castle and Leo Rogin, from their arrival in Spain as young Jewish idealists to their dramatically different fates as hero and deserter.
   Neither really knows what he's getting into; though they share a commitment to oppose fascism, Mitch is escaping from two girlfriends and a connection with organized crime, while Leo feels compelled to follow his friends Murray and Aaron.
   Mitch is a high-school dropout who loves Dumas; Leo is a musician and a college student. Mitch has done some street-corner speaking for his YCL group but hasn't been able to make it through either Marx or Engels; Leo thinks of himself as a committed Communist.
   Once in battle, however, their superficial similarities and differences begin to drop away and their fundamental characters come to the fore. Leo is overcome by fear and ends up carried from the field with supposed heatstroke; Mitch's hidden ability to lead begins to emerge.
   Alternating between Mitch's and Leo's perspectives, the novel provides a vivid account of the hardships, choices, exultations, and tragedies experienced by the American volunteers. Mitch endures the death of one comrade after another as he gradually rises to the rank of Battalion Commander; Leo repeatedly deserts and rejoins, digs graves and becomes entangled with the mother of a deaf-mute child.
   Ultimately, Spain makes a man of Mitch, while Leo never redeems himself.

Rave Reviews
  • Publisher's Weekly hails its "gritty realism" and "eye for political complexity."
  • Best-selling novelist Howard Fast says: "I think it's the best book about war since Erich Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front."
  • Historian Alan Wald says: "Another Hill is a fine novel and at the same time an important historical document... [Wolff] complicates, enriches, and problematizes the political meaning of 'The Good Fight.'"
  • Ring Lardner, Jr., whose brother was one of the last Americans killed in Spain, says: "Another Hill is the best book so far about the American participation in Spain."
  • Veteran journalist Martha Gellhorn, who first met Wolff while covering the war in Spain with Ernest Hemingway, said: "This extraordinary novel centers on one battalion, the Americans, known as the Lincolns, barely trained men who went into battle armed with 1903 Remington rifles. I have never read more intimate, convincing, and devastating accounts of combat."
More Reviews

  I'd like to order a copy of Another Hill

I'd like to read some excerpts from Another Hill

 

 

More Novels by Milton Wolff

Milton Wolff wrote the bulk of Another Hill in the late 1960s, although he continued to revise the novel up until its publication in 1994. Another Hill was by no means his only literary project during this period, however. Not only did he produce numerous articles and countless letters, he also wrote A Member of the Working Class and most of The Premature Antifascist. In these two novels, he carries the story of Mitch Castle both backward and forward in time, covering boyhood and early youth in the former and the character's struggles to get to the front in World War II to fight Hitler in the latter.
   In A Member of the Working Class, Milton Wolff probes his childhood and youth to create a rich, sensuously detailed tale of a boy growing up as a first-generation American in Brooklyn during the 1920s and 1930s - a young American whose growing growing political awareness would lead him to volunteer to fight fascism directly.
   In The Premature Antifascist, Wolff puts his efforts to reach the front, intermingled with the complexities of married life, to good fictional effect as Mitch Castle returns from Spain only to be caught up in American Communism and reaction to Stalin's 1939 pact with Hitler; the need to find work; and an old love triangle with his quiet high-school girlfriend and his brother's vehemently Catholic mistress.

I want to read more about
A Member of the Working Class		  I want to read more about
The Premature Antifascist

Photographs from the Spanish Civil War

Drawings and paintings by Milton Wolff

This site in other languages:

  • Spanish
  • Portuguese
  • German
  • French

Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA)

Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (VALB)

Other Spanish Civil War sites

Return to Milt’s home page.
Site designed by Karla Huebner.
This site © Milton Wolff 1998.