Book - BookDetective

Name: The Manchurian Candidate

Author: Richard Condon
Year: 1959
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Genres/categories:
Thriller, Spies/Espionage, Fiction, Classic, Mystery, Politics, Suspense

Purchase/reserch links:

ISBNs:
9781568582702
1568582706

Everyone knows the controversial 1962 film of The Manchurian Candidate starring Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury, even though it was taken out of circulation for 25 years after JFK's assassination. Equally controversial on publication, and just as timely today, is Richard Condon's original novel.
First published in 1959, The Manchurian Candidate is Condon's riveting take on a little-known corner of the cold war, the almost sci-fi concept of American soldiers captured, brainwashed, and programmed by their Chinese captors to return to the states as unsuspected political assassins. Condon's expert manipulation of the book's multiple themes - from anticommunist hysteria to megalomaniacal motherhood - makes this one of the most dazzling, and enduring, products of an unforgettable time.