The Gods Will Have Blood

Nov 12, 2025 9:48 AM

Author:Anatole France,Frederick Davies

It is April 1793 and the final power struggle of the French Revolution is taking hold: the aristocrats are dead and the poor are fighting for bread in the streets. In a Paris swept by fear and hunger lives Gamelin, a revolutionary young artist appointed magistrate, and given the power of life and death over the citizens of France. But his intense idealism and unbridled single-mindedness drive him inexorably towards catastrophe. Published in 1912, The Gods Will Have Blood is a breathtaking story of the dangers of fanaticism, while its depiction of the violence and devastation of the Reign of Terror is strangely prophetic of the sweeping political changes in Russia and across Europe.

Reviews

A gift to humanity

—— Giuseppe Verdi

An important book... Extraordinary

—— Independent on Sunday

Probably the best book on the [Booker] longlist, the one that will last... Every word counts. Every sentence lives

—— Evening Standard

The best novel I've read this year, a book so bold and so clever that one wants to call it something other than a novel, to take it out of that commonplace genre

—— Frank Kermode , Times Literary Supplement

A readable and engaging book. Demanding, playful, provocative...hugely enlightening and rewarding

—— Sunday Times

Mr Greens' extraordinary power of plot-making, of suspense and of narration...moves continuously both in time and space and in emotion

—— The Times

His style is spare, that's what is so beautiful. His novels are genuine romans philosophies - novels illustrating ideas

—— Piers Paul Read

In a class by himself...the ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century man’s consciousness and anxiety

—— William Golding

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