Plucked from Obscurity by a Collapsing Regime?

March 16, 2025 7:19 PM

I’m looking for stories (fiction but preferably nonfiction) about individuals who have been selected for favor by a collapsing regime. A tale of takes the test / runs the race / wins the award and is whisked to the capital where a full re-education occurs. Only after our heroine has fully identified with her new overlords does she learn the regime is on the way out. She eventually has to adapt to a new world and laments her prior “fortune”.
posted by jefficator to Media & Arts (9 answers total)

Consider Angela Merkel's autobiography, here reviewed by Christopher Clark.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 8:02 PM on March 16 [1 favorite]

A Memory Called Empire is a story about a diplomat from the edge of the Empire who gets called to the home world/center of of the Empire. It is not a full-reducation but more about the seduction of the powerful dominant culture. Not perfect match for what you are looking for but a very thoughtful and well written book.
posted by metahawk at 11:14 PM on March 16 [1 favorite]

Not exactly what you asked for, but there's The Last Emperor (about the last emperor of China). The eponymous character wasn't exactly plucked from obscurity -- he was already royalty, being the nephew of his late predecessor, but he was selected when he was still a toddler, and grew up having to come to terms with the fall of the Qing dynasty and the transition of China from an empire to a republic.
posted by ambulatorybird at 11:33 PM on March 16 [3 favorites]

Another not exactly what you asked for answer. With many of the similar questions here, I have been trying to remember an important book I read twenty years ago, and yesterday, I finally found it: Defying Hitler: A Memoir by Sebastian Haffner

What he does do is supply an explanation of why more Germans did not try to prevent the Nazi revolution. When Hitler came to power there was still a widespread feeling that he would not last. This was not an entirely irrational conclusion; governments had come and gone regularly for the previous six months. But this view left all the potential opponents of the regime off-balance. Before they had had time to adjust, Hitler had emergency powers, the rule of law was torn up and single-party rule was imposed. They were also immobilised by terror. It is currently fashionable to argue that terror was much less obtrusive than once believed, because there was such widespread enthusiasm for the regime, but Haffner’s account makes it clear that fear played a paralysing part in preventing dissent.

posted by mumimor at 4:15 AM on March 17 [4 favorites]

sorry to bother you
posted by HearHere at 5:31 AM on March 17 [1 favorite]

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh shares a lot of those themes. Wonderful 2024 Hugo winner, hampered by a forgettable cover.
posted by lizard music at 9:51 AM on March 17

The New Fuhrer
posted by zadcat at 12:12 PM on March 17 [1 favorite]

It’s a while since I read it, so I can’t remember quite how closely it fits your brief, but When the Doves Disappeared by Sofi Oksanen is set partly in Estonia in 1941, in a small village which kept changing hands between the Germans and Soviets as the front line moved back and forth. People who are sucking up to the regime one minute, suddenly find themselves enemies of the state the next.

It’s fiction, but very much based in the facts of what happened to Estonia and Estonians during the war.
posted by penguin pie at 4:40 PM on March 17 [1 favorite]

Gideon the Ninth seems to fit at least much of that
posted by troywestfield at 6:34 AM on March 21