Synopsis: "It was H. G. Wells's ambition to write a book called The Shaving of Karl Marx. He found Marx a woolly thinker and resented his authority as the Sage and Patriarch of socialism. ... ... [Stover] brings Lenin to Wells's house at Sandgate, in search of English conversation lessons, at the crucial moment in April 1902 when he is trying to wrest control of the Russian Social Democrats from the ageing Plekhanov. A series of philosophical dialogues reveals Wells as a more single-minded political theorist, and Lenin as much more of a literary critic and sf fan, than we might otherwise have suspected. ..." --Patrick Parrinder, 1983 review