A Spectre Haunting: China Miéville on the Communist Manifesto
Channel: British Library
Date: 2022-06-10

China Miéville talks to professor of political theory and writer Lea Ypi about his new book A Spectre, Haunting, a reading of the modern world's most controversial and enduring political document: the Communist Manifesto.

The Manifesto is a text that shows no sign of fading into antiquarian obscurity. Published in 1848 by two émigrés from Germany, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, this strange political tract is an apocalyptic vision of an insatiable system that penetrates every corner of the world, reduces every relationship to that of profit, and bursts asunder the old forms of production and of politics.

Its ideas continue to resonate in our world. In his book, China Miéville uncovers ghosts, sorcery and creative destruction as he gives a strikingly imaginative take on what Marx’s book has to say to us today.

The event will also include a glimpse of a first edition of the Communist Manifesto and Marx’s own copies of his writings from the British Library collection. Marx remains perhaps the most famous ‘Reader’ in the Library’s history.

China Miéville has received numerous awards for his writing, including the Arthur C. Clarke Award (three times), the British Fantasy Award (twice), and the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel (four times). His novels include Perdido Street Station, King Rat, Un Lun Dun, The City & The City, Railsea and The Last Days of New Paris. He has also written a narrative history of the Bolshevik Revolution, October.

Lea Ypi is a professor of Political Theory at the London School of Economics. Her recent book Free: Coming of Age at the End of Empire, is a remarkable memoir of growing up amid political upheaval in Albania. It was shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize, Baillie Gifford Prize, the Costa Biography Award and the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize. It is being translated into 19 languages.