I did enjoy reading this book, but unfortunately I didn't finish it. It didn't have quite enough to hold my interest. Having said that, the book did do a good job of creating characters, giving a great sense of what it's like to be young and growing up, wanting approval from friends, and wondering whether or not you can trust people.

I do think it's a good read and would recommend it, there just wasn't quite enough going on in it in for me.

A fascinating interweaving of multiple perspectives to build an image of revolutions. Really emotive and rich, I recommend this small read to anyone seeking a range of views on the topic. Compelling novel with amazing characters I connected with strongly

- thanks to netgalley and the publisher for providing me with the ARC in exchange for an early review.

*Copy provided by netgalley in exchange for an honest review*

How to be a revolutionary is a beautiful portrayle of how each and every single person can make a small difference, and that building a better life and a better world is based on fighting for what is right.
However, this three POV novel was sometimes too confusing, since we could not understand at first who were the main narrators of specific parts. I hope to read more from the author in the future.

How to be a Revolutionary is not easy reading, however, what was most important to me was the concept that if one so wishes one can change the world. It does not need to be with big actions and fanfare, sometimes slow movements and small actions are the ones that can cause major movements when many people abide by the same philosophy. This story mixes fiction with reality and describes quite truthfully the harsh life under the communist ruling.

*Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this book for review, all opinions are my own*

DNF 19%

Maybe I will come back to it in the future.
It was not a bd book, but it put me in a reading slump.
It was very interesting story, I was like but not enough to continue.
But I reccommend if you if the story seems nice to you.

I started out enjoying this - the friendships, the different timelines and cities, the discussions on communism in different cultures. The friendship between Beth and Zhao was probably my favourite part (i love an intergenerational friendship). But around the 200-page mark, i felt like the writing took a real dip - the dialogue felt really clunky and overwritten and the plot almost became a bit melodramatic in comparison to the earlier tone of the book. By the end, sadly I found myself indifferent to what would happen to Beth. Which is a shame, because I think the book started out really well.

At the heart of this novel, Davids is writing about conscience—asking what we owe to ourselves, our communities and our larger worlds, and honestly, about willful ignorance. The book’s interwoven stories—Beth fighting South African apartheid, Zhao’s search for his mother, and fictionalized letters from Langston Hughes—really work together to force the reader to turn inward. It is a sprawling novel, held together by Davids’ impressive prose.

I included this title in my round-up of winter and spring 2022 books for Book & Film Globe: https://bookandfilmglobe.com/fiction/seven-novels-to-read-in-2022/

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to read this book!

But this unfortunately was not for me! I did not finish this read, as I could never really get into it. I am going to be extra careful in the future with the requests I make, as this taught me that there are some things that will not draw me in, at no fault of the author.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for letting me read an e-copy in exchange for an honest review.

This was a thought-provoking and beautiful novel. The complex map of different locations and eras being covered is woven together really well in a way that made the potentially confusing mixture of narratives easy to follow. I liked how this novel paid tribute to revolutionaries from around the world, though it was undeniably depressing to read when confronting the harsh realities of revolution.

I love how this gave a voice to people of color. The storyline was great and made me quite emotional. I found it bit hard to follow the narration. I’m not familiar with the time period and the events that took place, which may have played a factor in this although I think a little more background in the book itself would have helped remedy this. As I read on though, things started to make more sense. I was able to form a clear picture of what the problems were and where the plot was going. The storytelling was complex, at least for me it was, the prose wasn’t simple but I still liked it.

The entire book had this vague air about it. There’s a lot to read between the lines and I probably didn’t pick up on all the subtleties. Overall, I think this is a relevant read, a mix of historical events with the present, always showing reality as it was and as it is.

This review to be posted closer to pub date!

A book that reinforces the fact that revolutions aren't local to anyone, a different form in a different geography with different impact, always exists. in C.A.Davids' How to be a revolutionary, revolutionaries merge in a small Chinese apartment at the house of a South African diplomat. Beth, has seen her share of violence during turbulent times in South Africa, Zhao - her neighbor has traumatic memories from the times of red army and the deep impact incident of Tiananmen Square has had on him. He isn't allowed to talk about it, but the two pick up Langston Hughes collection of poetry and letters to talk around their personal involvement in their country's spotty history. It all changes when Zhao disappears and leaves behind papers that outline the knowledge of the past. It has diplomatic and political impact on Beth which is more revealing than she had anticipated.

Davids uses Langston Hughes, mostly fictionalized (with very few of his letters from real life) but based on his actual travels to Asia. The fictionalized letters he exchanges with a South African man provides broader perspective to the nature of oppression, the nihilism which the oppressed embrace after decades of mistreatment and yet, feeling the hope of a better future, and fighting the fight today. However this sentiment is largely obfuscated by the very existence of Beth and Zhao whose political ideation doesn't go unnoticed or in some cases, unpunished.

This was a great read with the author challenging readers with morally complex scenarios and making their reader to think and then - feel.

I did like the characters but the story did not grip me. The characters were original and kind of quirky but felt like the kind of characters you meet at school. I just wasn't engaged enough to continue the story. The writing and character development is good. I guess I just wasn't in the mood for literary fiction.

I honestly found it really confusing, the jumps between characters, place and time is verre confusing and at times really messy.

Some defiiniton if words like Oulam, kak. Maybe in footnotes fir those who don't know or understand the words and context of the sentences

I'm so sorry, but I just couldn't get into the book, even after reading a good chunk of it. I found the time shifts very confusing and had trouble working out who was who, making it difficult to recognise the characters as they came back in. I appreciate the opportunity to review the book and hope that my humble opinion is one of the very few negatives you'll receive.

The thing to do with a novel where it's hard to get a firm footing, I've always been told, is to simply give yourself over to the overall flow of the book and not get too caught up in individual events. And it was with that in mind that I pressed ahead through the shifting landscape of C.A. Davids' "How to be a Revolutionary," which with beautifully lyrical prose takes up some of the landmark moments of the 20th century. The student protest in China's Tiananmen Square with its iconic image of the man standing defiantly before a column of tanks and the aftermath during which residents didn't dare even utter the day's date, the litany of horrors under apartheid presented so graphically to South Africa’s truth and reconciliation commission, the Great Famine in China with its estimated death toll in the tens of millions, the various events play themselves out in their respective ways as each contributes its share toward an overall impassioned statement against all manner of prejudice and bigotry. Still, for all the overall breadth of the novel, the most compelling parts for me were the more subdued sections in which Beth, an emotionally scarred veteran of apartheid and a soured marriage, has relocated to Shanghai, where she is paired with Zhao, who has been writing a manuscript about his experiences in China. Reminiscent it was for me, Beth’s part of the novel, with its depiction of a woman in flight from her past, of Lawrence Osborne's "The Glass Kingdom," in which a woman has also fled her particular circumstances to install herself in a high-rise apartment building in Bangkok. And just as in that novel, where for all the vividness with which the city was presented the chief draw for me was the particularization of one woman's situation, here too it was the Beth parts with their ordinariness as she takes up her new life that gripped me most. Still, Davids' novel in its entirety is an important, even vital one for our day, and perhaps nowhere more so than in current America, which with its fractionalization and increasingly evident white supremacist sentiments seems to be moving ever more alarmingly toward the scenarios of intolerance that David's book is such an eloquent statement against.

Arc from Netgalley for honest review.

I think this book just wasn't my genre or style so I DNF'd around 20%. I found the prose to be confusing and tedious. The first few chapters were boring to me. The MC seemed to have very little personality.

It really comes down to preference, in my opinion. This could be the perfect book for you but it wasn't for me.

Thank you to CA Davids, Verso Books and Netgalley for my ARC copy. I love this book. It gives voices to POCs and I love how it covers different time and countries. The characters are memorable especially Zhao and Beth. This book is timely and a must read. This book deserves to be a bestseller! I would probably buy a hard copy once it becomes available.

Starts out with beautiful prose that Ebbs and flows throughout. This is a story with many stories. It is a trifecta of cultures (China, South Africa, US) coalesced with revolutionary and artistic spirit, and grave realities.

I feel like the quality of the writing waned 2/3 through and then picked back up towards the very end.

I’m very interested with how this will be received upon publication. Will it be read as nihilistic cyclical imperialism-revolution cum-totalitarianism repeat, or, as I read it, a homage to cross-cultural revolutionaries in whatever form they come.

It was great, a story mixed with historical events, and how it was from inside and the reality of it, it was very interesting.
We follow three storylines one that is the story of a South African diplomate, Beth, moving to China who will meet Zhao who have seen things he isn't allowed to talk about (the horrors of Mao, the atrocities of Tiananmen Square). This will pull Beth into political machinery and become target of interrogations because of her friendship with Zhao; There's also th storyline of Langston Hughes travelling in Asia in the 1930's where there's a glimpse of how Black Americans were treated in and out the US.