Kisch In Australia: The Untold Story

On 13 November 1934, Egon Erwin Kisch, the famous Czech writer, journalist, and activist, defied an Australian government ban on his entry by jumping off the deck of the SS Strathaird in Melbourne and into Australian history. His case instantly became a media sensation and the focus of an important civil liberties campaign. In the ensuing legal battle, the communist Kisch successfully challenged the conservative government’s right to bar him, humiliating the newly appointed attorney-general – Robert Gordon Menzies – in the process. Kisch was convinced that his ban was the result of Nazi pressure on an Australian government eager to trade with a resurgent Germany. In fact, as this book reveals for the first time, both Kisch and Menzies were the victims of a deceitful British Secret Service campaign and a mysterious agent codenamed ‘Snuffbox.’ Kisch’s international significance has never been fully understood or explained by Australian commentators. This important new book places him, and his Australian experience, in the larger context of the rise of fascism in Europe and the ideological struggles of the 1930s.

viii, 229 p. : ill., ports. ; 21 cm. #251021 (Prev. ownership on prelim.)