Their home has also been taken and converted to barracks for multiple families. Their hopes of regaining their properties have been dashed by the rise of the Red Army, and they’re forced to seek other forms of livelihood. However, the family is soon sent into exile by the Bolsheviks, and return to their home in Petrograd to find that the family’s textile factory has been seized and nationalized. A free-spirited and willful girl, she is resistant to being confined to a mold or told what to do. It begins as Kira Argounova is living a comfortable life as the younger daughter of a well-off family. We The Living takes place from 1922 to 1925 in post-revolution Russia. It was adapted into a short-lived play titled The Unconquered in 1940, and a 1942 Italian film adaptation soon followed. It was revised for a 1957 re-release after Rand became a successful author, and has been reissued six times, most recently in 2011, and has sold over three million copies. Although it is not one of Rand’s best-known novels, it received overall positive reviews upon its release and was praised for its detailed depiction of Soviet politics, although reception varied widely based on the political sympathies of the reviewer. It also explores themes of family and the endurance of the human spirit. Like many of Rand’s novels, its primary theme is anti-communism and the way communism suppresses achievement. Set in post-revolution Russia, it is a heavily autobiographical tale focusing on Kira Argounova, the young daughter of a bourgeois family whose comfortable existence is thrown into turmoil when the revolution strips them of their wealth and forces them into a struggle for survival. We the Living is the 1936 debut novel of Russian-American novelist Ayn Rand.

Ayn rand the unconquered