| The Manchurian Candidate | |
|---|---|
1st edition |
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| Author(s) | Richard Condon |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Thriller novel |
| Publisher | McGraw-Hill |
| Publication date | 1959 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | 311 pp |
| ISBN | 1-56858-270-6 |
| OCLC Number | 52409655 |
| Dewey Decimal | 813/.54 21 |
| LC Classification | PS3553.O487 M36 2003 |
The Manchurian Candidate (1959), by Richard Condon, is a political thriller novel about the son of a prominent US political family who is brainwashed into being an unwitting assassin for the Communist Party.
The novel has been adapted twice into a feature film by the same title, in 1962 and again in 2004.
Contents |
Captain Bennett Marco, Sergeant Raymond Shaw, and the rest of their infantry platoon are kidnapped during the Korean War in 1952. They are taken to Manchuria, and are brainwashed to believe that Shaw saved their lives in combat — for which Congress awards him the Medal of Honor.
Years after the war, Marco, now back in the United States working as an intelligence officer, begins suffering the recurring nightmare of Shaw murdering two of his comrades, all while clinically observed by Chinese and Russian intelligence officials. When Marco learns that another soldier from the platoon also has been suffering the same nightmare, he sets to uncovering the mystery and its meaning.
It is revealed that the Communists have been using Shaw as a sleeper agent, a guiltless assassin subconsciously activated by seeing the “Queen of Diamonds” playing card while playing solitaire. Provoked by the appearance of the card, he obeys orders which he then forgets. Shaw’s KGB handler is his domineering mother Eleanor, a ruthless power broker working with the Communists to execute a "palace coup d’état" to quietly overthrow the U.S. government, with her husband, McCarthy-esque Senator Johnny Iselin, as a puppet dictator.
In 1998, software engineer C.J. Silverio noted that several long passages of the novel seemed to be borrowed, almost word for word, from Robert Graves' 1934 novel I, Claudius. Forensic linguist John Olsson judged that "There can be no disputing that Richard Condon plagiarized from Robert Graves." [1]
The Manchurian Candidate has been adapted twice into a feature film by the same title. The first film, released in 1962, is considered a classic of the political thriller genre. It was directed by John Frankenheimer and starred Laurence Harvey as Shaw, Frank Sinatra as Marco, and Angela Lansbury as Eleanor in an Academy Award-nominated performance.
The second film, released in 2004, was directed by Jonathan Demme, and starred Liev Schreiber as Shaw, Denzel Washington as Marco, and Meryl Streep as Eleanor. It was well-received by critics, and moderately successful at the box office. The 2004 film updated the conflict to the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and made the setting a dystopian near future America. An American corporation is the perpetrator of the brainwashing and conspiracy instead of foreign Communist governments, and the Johnny Iselin character is dropped in favor of making both Shaw and his mother elected politicians.