The Golden Notebook Terms

The British colonial name for the island that is now Sri Lanka. read analysis of Ceylon

The British colonial territory that is now Malawi. read analysis of Nyasaland

Borrowed from Dutch, a term for wide expanses of grassland in southern Africa. read analysis of Veld

A small hill in the veld. read analysis of Kopje

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were an American couple convicted of spying for the Soviet Union and executed in 1953. read analysis of The Rosenbergs

The Soviet revolutionary and leader who took control of the Soviet Union after Vladimir Lenin’s death in 1924 and transformed it into an industrialized, authoritarian nation. He developed a strong cult of personality and famously… read analysis of Joseph Stalin

The post-World War II peacetime conscription program in the United Kingdom. All men aged 17-21 were required to serve for 18 months unless they were conscientious objectors or worked in “essential services”: coal mining, farming… read analysis of National Service

Someone who refuses to join or continue participating in military service because of political, religious, or moral opposition. read analysis of Conscientious Objector

An island in the Taiwan Strait, over which a brief war was fought in 1954-1955 between Communist and Nationalist groups (the People’s Republic of China and Republic of China that now govern China and Taiwan… read analysis of Quemoy

The enormous fortified citadel in the center of Moscow that has served as the seat of Russian monarchies and governments for centuries. read analysis of The Kremlin

Also known as a lobotomy, a neurosurgical procedure that cuts the prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain largely responsible for what psychologists call “executive function,” which includes decision-making, complex cognition and self-control, and personality… read analysis of Leucotomy

A strain of Marxism started by the Soviet leader and dissident Leon Trotsky, who was explicitly and vehemently critical of Joseph Stalin. read analysis of Trotskyism

An 1899 short story about a woman, seemingly incapable of independent thought, who latches onto the opinions and personalities of the various men she falls in love with throughout her life. read analysis of Chekhov’s “The Darling”

A fashionable neighborhood of London and the center of the city’s sex industry until the 1980s. read analysis of Soho

The Algerian National Liberation Front, the main organization that fought the French in the Algerian War of Independence from 1954 until 1962. read analysis of F.L.N.