'Daniel Kalder has slogged his way through the 20th century's "Krakatoa-like eruption of despotic verbiage" so you don't have to: from Lenin to Mao to Kim Jong-il and Saddam Hussein, via Turkmenbashi's outrageous Book of the Soul, once required reading for driving tests in Turkmenistan. Kalder's dispatches from "the transnational empire of ultra-boredom" are not only very funny, they also form a quirky, pacey guide to recent world history.' * <i>Sunday Times</i>, Books of the Year * 'This wonderfully entertaining book is a cautionary tale about how societies are easily wooed by foolish demagogues spouting gibberish.' * <i>The Times</i>, Books of the Year * 'I enjoyed this book a great deal...it's actually a rather snappy read.' * Will Self, <i>Guardian</i> * 'Full of...wonders, and startling individual facts...An overwhelmingly powerful reminder of 20th-century misrule, and of just how delusional human beings can be - especially if they're literate.' * <i>Telegraph</i> * 'Hugely compelling...Like coming across a planet-sized car crash, with hundreds of millions snarled up in the wreckage: you can't look away. Kalder has really dug deep into the minds of these infernal texts' creators, and thus delivers some truly enlightening insights.' * <i>Irish Independent </i> * 'Daniel Kalder...deserves a medal...Dictator Literature is a great book...An insightful book, but also a funny one.' * <i>The Times</i> * 'Very funny...After reading Dictator Literature you will never look at books with such a benevolent eye again.' * <i>Spectator</i> * 'A engaging, brisk, and morbidly humorous haul of the lives and literary pretensions of the murderous wingnuts who defined a century.' * <i>Irish Times</i> * 'Kalder's book is an informative, lively and often hilarious account of some of the worst authors who ever lived, doubling as a history of the terrible ideologies that marred the last century. Some execrable books have come out of communism and fascism, but Dictator Literature is certainly not one of them.' * <i>Catholic Herald</i> * 'A fascinating study...partly an enjoyable romp but mostly a sombre sidelong-glance history of 20th-century totalitarianism.' * <i>Sunday Telegraph</i> * 'Brisk, and full of antic fun.' * <i>New Statesman</i> * 'Highly readable.' * <i>Herald</i> * 'A mesmerizing study of books by despots great and small, from the familiar to the largely unknown.' * <i>Washington Post</i> * 'Kalder is our cheeky and irreverent guide to the (generally aggressively tedious) prose by history's despots.' * <i>Tatler</i> * 'This is about the most discomforting book I've read in the past year. Never mind Trump and never mind Twitter: Kalder demonstrates that words themselves, and the escapist spells we weave with them, are our riskiest civic gift.' -- Simon Ings, author of <i>Stalin and the Scientists</i> 'A compelling examination of why bad minds create bad writing, and therefore a valuable read for anyone interested in literature - or the world, in fact. Kalder's dry humour makes Dictator Literature a fun tour de force through the mad history of the 20th century and the present.' -- Norman Ohler, author of <i>Blitzed</i>