John Sweeney's top 10 books on corruption
The drive for power
leads to deceit. Soon moral ruin comes in its train, then violence, then
murder. This cycle of high hopes rolling down to hell in a handcart is probably
plot No 2 in literature. (Plot No 1 being girl meets boy, etc.) Corruption of
the soul, of the heart, of men, of power, of ideals and idealism has been at
the dead centre of so many great books it’s kind of invidious to pick a top 10.
Still, here we are.
My first thriller, Cold, touches on
how too much veneration for God
and soil – love of nation – can corrupt. The hero is an ex-IRA man,
one of his allies an ex-Mormon CIA man wrestling with his religion. But events
in modern Russia inspired it: things I’ve seen with my own eyes from Chechnya
to Moscow, from Siberia to Sochi. It’s not about Putin, but while
working as a journalist, I’ve met him and three of his critics: Anna
Politkovskaya, Natasha
Estemirova and Boris Nemtsov. They
all got murdered, reason enough to dedicate Cold to their memories. Below is my
idiosyncratic selection of the books that pass two tests: they’re all great
reads, and their subjects are rotten to the core.
Macbeth
by William Shakespeare
It still grips me, this play written in 1611 about a Scottish nobleman corrupted by the lust for power who goes on to kill a good king and – to secure his grip on the throne – keeps on killing. Rereading Macbeth, you get the flavour of what it must be like to be at the court of Kim Jong-un in Pyongyang, or of Caliph Al-Baghdadi in Isisland: “It will have blood, they say; blood will have blood.”
It still grips me, this play written in 1611 about a Scottish nobleman corrupted by the lust for power who goes on to kill a good king and – to secure his grip on the throne – keeps on killing. Rereading Macbeth, you get the flavour of what it must be like to be at the court of Kim Jong-un in Pyongyang, or of Caliph Al-Baghdadi in Isisland: “It will have blood, they say; blood will have blood.”
Darkness at Noon
by Arthur Koestler
The outstanding novel about how the Russian revolution became twisted by Stalinism. It’s great literature, but at its heart is the corruption of a human soul, as the great revolutionary Rubashov allows himself to be ruined – and ruin others he loves – to serve an ideal. When people rot, Koestler tells us, they do so from within.
The outstanding novel about how the Russian revolution became twisted by Stalinism. It’s great literature, but at its heart is the corruption of a human soul, as the great revolutionary Rubashov allows himself to be ruined – and ruin others he loves – to serve an ideal. When people rot, Koestler tells us, they do so from within.
Chinatown by
Robert Towne
Picking a screenplay is a cheat. Yeah, but it’s Chinatown. To me, this is the defining work of art about the corruption that is the essence of LA; the living, breathing, pulsing dishonesty of Tinseltown. At the dead centre of the American Dream is a lie, a city built on wrongdoing. When power indulges in murder, hypocrisy and paedophilia, the forces of law and order don’t just look the other way, they entrap the honest detective. He ends up with slit nostrils. The helplessness of ordinary people in the face of corrupt entitlement has never been better told.
Picking a screenplay is a cheat. Yeah, but it’s Chinatown. To me, this is the defining work of art about the corruption that is the essence of LA; the living, breathing, pulsing dishonesty of Tinseltown. At the dead centre of the American Dream is a lie, a city built on wrongdoing. When power indulges in murder, hypocrisy and paedophilia, the forces of law and order don’t just look the other way, they entrap the honest detective. He ends up with slit nostrils. The helplessness of ordinary people in the face of corrupt entitlement has never been better told.
Zinky Boys: Soviet
Voices from the Afghan War by Svetlana Alexievich
The 2015 Nobel laureate’s stunning work on the Soviet agony in Afghanistan is simply written but no less profound for that. She tells the stories of individual soldiers and Soviet citizens, in Kabul and elsewhere, coming to realise that the ideals of fraternity and solidarity the old men in Moscow spout are toxic. It’s a lament for a noble idealism that turned sick. The boys were sent home in zinc coffins – hence the title... read more:
The 2015 Nobel laureate’s stunning work on the Soviet agony in Afghanistan is simply written but no less profound for that. She tells the stories of individual soldiers and Soviet citizens, in Kabul and elsewhere, coming to realise that the ideals of fraternity and solidarity the old men in Moscow spout are toxic. It’s a lament for a noble idealism that turned sick. The boys were sent home in zinc coffins – hence the title... read more:
