My Revolutions, Hari Kunzru's third novel, is the story of a "failed" revolutionary, a member of a radical left-wing group (think, Weather Underground) set in Britain in the late 1960s. The protagonist, Chris Carver, AKA Michael Frame, has gone "underground" for several decades as the story starts - in 1998. "Hiding in plain sight" would be a more accurate description of his situation. He is living a manufactured identity as a middle-class househusband in London. His affiliation with a radical group of revolutionaries decades earlier resulted in his having dropped out of sight as things got too hot, doing a stint in a Buddhist monastery in Thailand to detox from a heroin addiction among other adventures, before taking on a new identity. His new status quo is shaken when, on a holiday in France, he sees a women he thinks is his old companion, lover, fellow revolutionary in the old days who he presumed had been killed in the violent takeover of the West German embassy in Copenhagen years earlier. This incident, along with the unexpected and "unfortunate' meeting of someone tangentially connected with his revolutionary days precipitates a crisis. The narrative jumps back and forward in time and paints a clear picture of Chris/Michael and his current mental state as well as what he has been through. Considering the fact that the writer was actually born in 1969 and certainly had no first-hand experience in the milieu he describes so vividly, it is a believable and compelling story of a turbulent time and the reflection about it in the mind of one of its participants.
For a review of the book from the NY Times, click here: https://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/10/books/review/Blythe-t.html
