Hardy, Frank

But the dead are many : a novel in fugue form / Frank Hardy. (London : Bodley Head, 1975)

If Power without glory was Hardy's most successful novel, But the Dead are Many was his most ambitious. It deals with a member of the Australian Communist Party, John Morel, who becomes disillusioned with life after he realises the repression and hypocrisy of the Russian Communist model. He ends by committing suicide.

Although the character is based on Paul Mortier, Hardy has created a figure who carries many of the concerns of CPA members in the 1950s and 1960s; particularly how a committed, idealistic Communist should respond to the Soviet invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and the details of the show trials of the 1930s, which were made public under Khrushchev.

The cover is by Charles Blackman.