Book Description
A dazzling biography of a life rich in comedy and Victorian melodrama, in
grand plots and dire straits: Karl Marx proves to be wholly a man of our
times.
The history of the 20th century is Marx's legacy. Not since Jesus
Christ has an obscure pauper inspired such global devotion - or been so
calamitously misinterpreted. The end of the century is a good moment to
strip away the mythology and try to rediscover Marx the man. There have
been many thousands of books on Marxism, but almost all are written by
academics and zealots for whom it is a near blaspemy to treat him as a
figure of flesh and blood. In the past few years there have been excellent
and successful biographies of many eminent Victorians and yet the most
influential of them has remained untouched. In this book Francis Wheen
will, for the first time, present Marx the man in all his brilliance and
frailty - as a poverty-stricken Prussian emigre who became a middle-class
English gentleman; as an angry agitator who spent much of his adult life
in scholarly silence in the British Museum Reading Room; as a gregarious
and convivial host who fell out with almost all his friends; as a devoted
family man who impregnated his housemaid; as a deeply earnest philosopoher
who loved drink, cigars and jokes.
Synopsis
This book presents Karl Marx as a man of both brilliance and frailty: as a
poverty-stricken Prussian emigre who became a middle-class English
gentleman; as an angry agitator; as a gregarious and convivial host; as a
devoted family man; and as a deeply earnest philosopher who loved drink
and cigars.
About the Author
Francis Wheen is a distinguished author and journalist who was voted
Columnist of the Year in February 1997 for his weekly column in the
Guardian. He has written several books including the highly acclaimed
biography of Tom Driberg MP which was shortlisted for the Whitbread prize
