Holy Week is a rich, complex, poetic novel which rewards several readings and its author is the same penetrating Marxist thinker, the same staunch patriot and lover of his country, who before taking this journey to the past, sent book after book into the thick of contemporary political battle. There has been no change, and no recantation before the literary and cultural Inquisition. Just as Galileo muttered, "The earth does move," so Aragon, not under his breath however but openly, says here that art is firmly linked to politics; not that a novel should be a political tract, but that the artist must get to know the same real life of the people which finds expression in their political consciousness. The main theme of the book is the picture of the French nation in the critical week in which Napoleon, just returned from Elba, is making his desperate...