Newmag presents one of the 100 best American novels of the 20th century: Robert Penn Warren's “All the King's Men” (trailer in Armenian)

Poet, novelist, literary critic Warren is the only writer to have won three Pulitzer Prizes for both prose and poetry. Robert Warren, graduate of the Universities of Berkeley, Yale and Oxford, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Jimmy Carter. The book "All the King's Men" was staged and screened several times. The very first screening immediately became a classic, winning 3 Oscars. The Library of Congress described it as a “culturally unique work.”

The novel tells the story of lawyer Willie Stark, who becomes a governor. The events are presented by Stark's supporter, his teammate, journalist Jack Barden. The literary work is about the price of a person's transformation after coming to power, as well as the price one pays for achieving their goals. It is believed that the prototype of the character is US Senator Hugh Long, who was assassinated in 1935. Hugh Long was the leader of Louisiana from 1928 to 1932. He was considered one of the most controversial members of the Democratic Party, whose populism sometimes reached the point of fascism. During this exact time, a young writer named Robert Penn Warren was lecturing at Louisiana State University.

The novel is written from the first person. Jack Barden is the governor's right-hand man, a former journalist who presents dramatic episodes of the political rise and management of his boss, Willie Stark. Stark's career is intertwined with the life story and philosophical reflections of Jack Berden.

One of the most important literary values of a book is language. According to New Republic, it is an exceptional work written with all the richness of American English, which depicts the significant turning points of our lives with great imagination and intellect. With very beautiful descriptive, subtle comparisons and subtexts, the author presents each scene and character as a frame of the film with detailed explanations.

Probably a factor as to why this novel is not that successful is the wrong depiction of it. For example, the cover of at least one publication says that this is a novel about the rise and fall of an American dictator. However, in addition to telling about the exaltation of the politician and his tenure, the “All the King’s Men" reveals many political contexts, presents the internal political atmosphere, which gave birth to such a person, tells how one person's actions affect other people, change both their present and their future. This is a novel that needs to be re-read regularly.

Robert Penn Warren's novel was translated almost simultaneously and published in the Soviet Union. Censorship allows it to be published in Russian because, according to communist ideologues, “it cursed the morals of the West, the defects of the capitalist system.” Although the book was published in 1946, it is even more relevant today. As The New York Review of Books points out, the lasting value of this novel is measured by the fact that Willie Stark has entered our literary collective consciousness.

The novel was translated into Armenian by Karlen Dallakyan. This is the second edition of the novel. The first one was published in 1976. Ahead of the second publication, the novel was substantially edited and annotated. It is noteworthy that the editor of the translation as well as the author of annotations is the head of Newmag publishing house Artak Aleksanyan.