The Manchurian Candidate.

CONDON, Richard.

Item Number: 100457

New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc, 1959.

First edition of this brilliant, controversial novel, basis for the 1962 film adaptation, which has been called “the most chilling piece of cold war paranoia ever committed to film” (New York Times). Octavo, original half cloth. Near fine in a good dust jacket. Jacket design by Bernard Krigstein.

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. The 1962 film bearing the same name was directed by John Frankenheimer, and starring Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, and Janet Leigh; co-starring are Angela Lansbury, Henry Silva, and James Gregory.