Fear of Mirrors
by Tariq Ali
(Verso, £9.99)

FIRST published in 1998, Tariq Ali’s novel is the second of an intended “fall of communism” trilogy in which he tackles the fascinating phenomenon of how and why so many communists hung on to their ideals despite Stalin’s criminality and the centralist, autocratic governments that ruled Eastern Europe in the name of the proletariat.

Ali begins his narrative in the former GDR and what happened after unification but then flashes back to the early years of revolutionary struggle. He is certainly very knowledgeable about the GDR and the communist experience and, unlike most other commentators on the fall of communism, views the demise with a certain regret rather than with schadenfreude.

There is an unresolved tension between Ali the political analyst and Ali the story-teller. He is not a natural novelist and his characters tend to represent ideological positions rather than being all-round and contradictory characters. Their symbolic, ideological role tends to dominate the narrative and gives the novel an uncomfortably didactic feel.

But he communicates well the sense of hope and optimism on the left that characterised the early part of the 20th century, certainly after the October Revolution, but also the sense of fatalism or resignation that accompanied the authoritarianism and increasing ossification of communist parties in Eastern Europe.

In his story, set a few years after German unification, his main protagonist Vladimir Meyer is an East German academic and convinced communist who has become disillusioned with socialism as practised in the GDR.

After unification, he is one of those blacklisted by the new Western-dominated government that is intent on destroying all vestiges of a socialist society. Meyer regrets the loss of a socialist ethos and detests its replacement by brutal capitalist and materialistic values. He joins the new Left Party that arose from the ashes of the old SED.

Despite Ali’s insights and detailed knowledge, he views history exclusively through a Trotskyist prism and often unquestioningly reiterates many of the well-worn cliches about life in the GDR. He ridicules its bureaucracy but is clearly unaware that in the new united Germany it is in many respects much worse.

And he talks about Vietnamese “slave workers” in the GDR, ignoring the fact that the state gave Vietnamese people, devastated and poisoned by US bombing, the opportunity of employment for the many who were left jobless.

These workers were not unlike the Turkish “guest workers” who went to West Germany and the fact that many were reluctant to return to Vietnam after their stint in the GDR came to an end tends to contradict Ali’s “slavery” terminology.

Yet, despite such weaknesses, Ali offers an alternative narrative for anyone interested in European left politics during the last century.

• The paperback edition of Fear of Mirrors is published on November 29.