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4.0 

A Spectre, Haunting

By China Miéville
A Spectre, Haunting by China Miéville digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

China Miéville's riveting engagement with the Communist Manifesto offers a lyrical introduction and a spirited defense of the modern world's most influential political document.

Few written works can so confidently claim to have shaped the course of history as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels's Manifesto of the Communist Party. Since first rattling the gates of the ruling order in 1848, this incendiary pamphlet has never ceased providing fuel for the fire in the hearts of those who dream of a better world. Nor has it stopped haunting the nightmares of those who sit atop the vastly unequal social system it condemns.

In this strikingly imaginative introduction, China Miéville provides readers with a guide to understanding the Manifesto and the many specters it has conjured. Through his unique and unorthodox reading, Miéville offers a spirited defense of the enduring relevance of Marx and Engels’ ideas.

Presented along with the full text of the Communist Manifesto, Miéville's guide has something to offer first-time readers, revolutionary partisans, and even the most hard-nosed skeptics.

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10 Reviews

4.0
“After finishing https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6157208908 , I got lost in a rabbit hole of video interviews with China Miéville (and Keanu Reeves, at first) and then got to this interview with Miéville about https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgKnrbvON9M&ab_channel=NovaraMedia . I love the way he speaks, kind of softly and gently, but with determination, and so the prospect of listening to eight hours of him whispering mellifluously for 8 hours about the Communist Manifesto sounded massively appealing. And it was! CW: The heavy mentioning of Tr*mp as a bygone thing (which even I, a European, found challenging to listen to these past few days) in a latter section in the book. That's how these communists get you! I'm just joking, I basically love this book because I already agree with most of everything that's in it and some of the stuff on love and hate was very thought-provoking. It's another angry book, very legitimately so! I am *that bitch* who was only able to read the Manifesto https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4640467804 , because at that time (early 2022), my brain was not ready for that kind of language (theory, philosophy sort of language). My brain has grown a lot since then and I was able to follow China's book quite well. This was a really great book, I have pulled a lot of excellent quotes in the updates. I love how it commented on the text as a literary text and placed it in the context of manifestos as a genre. It also addressed a lot of the criticism of the O.G. text (from gender and racial standpoint, for instance). But I do want to read it again in a physical copy, because he keeps referring to bits of the text that are numbered in the back! So that's a project for another day. I have to say the passion in the narration / text of the book was super evocative, feelings-wise, and it felt cathartic considering... *waves at everything around us*.”

About China Miéville

China Miéville is the multi-award-winning author of many works of fiction and non-fiction. His fiction includes The City and the City, Embassytown and This Census-Taker. He has won the Hugo, World Fantasy, and Arthur C. Clarke awards. His non-fiction includes the photo-illustrated essay London’s Overthrow, Between Equal Rights, a study of international law, and the narrative history of the Russian Revolution, October. He has written for various publications, including the New York Times, Guardian, Conjunctions and Granta, and he is a founding editor of Salvage.

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