ABSTRACT: This paper analyzes the similarities and differences in the political and intellectual biographies of Ervin Šinko and Manès Sperber, two cosmopolitan authors whose work is profoundly shaped by formative connections with the international labor movement. The link between these two writers lies in the fact that both authored historical novels that poeticize the fundamental political challenges of the labor movement of their time, drawing on concrete historical figures and events as their narrative framework. Erwin Šinko does so in The Optimists: A Novel of a Revolution, while Manès Sperber addresses these themes in his trilogy Like a Tear in the Ocean. The aim of this paper is to explore the similarities and differences in the ways Šinko and Sperber fictionalize their own experiences of the labor movement, wars, and revolutions.

KEYWORDS: Ervin Sinkó, The Optimists: The Novel of a Revolution, Manès Sperber, Like a Tear in the Ocean: A Trilogy, Historical novel, Hungarian Commune, Revolutionary violence, Yugoslav workers’ movement

SUMMARY: The paper analyzes the intellectual climate and political circumstances that shaped and heavily influenced the literary imagination and the semantic horizon of two novels—The Optimists: The Novel of a Revolution by Ervin Sinkó and Like a Tear in the Ocean: A Trilogy by Manès Sperber. Besides introductory remarks and conclusion, the paper’s structure is threefold, encompassing the following units: “parallel destinies,” “parallel novels,” and “Ervin Sinkó and Manès Sperber as historians.” In the first part, the author analyzes the First World War, the fall of the Empires, and the rise of the Third International (in the aftermath of the October Revolution) as historical events that defined both the political and cultural context in which Ervin Sinkó and Manès Sperber worked as communists and artists. In the second part, the author examines the strategies employed by both writers to narrate and fictionalize the experiences of the socialist revolutions. Here, the author concludes: “While Sinkó’s story is about overcoming crisis through faith, Sperber’s story is about a terminal crisis. Although both novels end in defeat, only Sinkó’s also ends with hope.” Such novelistic plots also correspond to the authors’ biographies—Sinkó remained committed to socialism and joined the Yugoslav partisan resistance in World War II. In contrast, Sperber ultimately became an opponent of socialism during the Cold War. In the next chapter, the author analyzes to what extent both novels could be considered historically veritable, highlighting that Sperber’s work displays a greater imaginative capacity. Nevertheless, the author argues that both novels exhibit valuable repositories of historical knowledge about the revolutionary movements of the twentieth century.