A Spectre, Haunting

By: China Miéville

Narrated by: China Miéville

In 1848, The Communist Manifesto was published by two émigrés from Germany. Marx and Engels' apocalyptic vision of an insatiable system that penetrates every corner of the world reduces every relationship to that of profit, and burst asunder the old forms of production and of politics. It is still a recognisable picture of our world—the vampiric energy of the system being once again highly contentious.

The Manifesto is a text that shows no sign of fading into antiquarian obscurity. Its ideas animate in different ways the work of writers like Yanis Varoufakis, Adam Tooze, Naomi Klein and the journalist Owen Jones.

China Mieville is not a writer who has been hemmed in by conventional notions of expertise or genre, and this is a strikingly imaginative take on Marx and what his most haunting book has to say to us today.

©2022 China Mieville (P)2022 W. F. Howes

Poignant and promising!!

An excellent analysis and objective discussion about the manifesto and why it is relevant today more than ever. Enjoyed the author’s narration as well. Highly recommend!

An excellent exegesis of the Manifesto

China Miéville does us all a great service with this carefully written, well-researched examination of the Manifesto of the Communist Party in its form, aims, historical context, and iterative versions. Miéville explores major criticisms of the text—both of good and bad faith—and in so doing reminds us all how alive and relevant that haunting specter remains today. A masterwork.

Excellent Audiobook

Miéville is a great writer and narrator. His prose and voice are both very engaging.

Enjoyed the book overall

Found some of the writing a little pretentious and over the top. But overall good read!

Easy to listen to, somewhat hard to follow in audio format

The voice is easy enough to listen to and to understand and the writing is generally clear, if rather intellectual at times (inevitable for this topic, I think), but it was sometimes tough for me to follow along. A large part of the book is a walkthrough of and commentary on the text of the Communist Manifesto and so, I think I would have gotten more from it if I were reading the CM alongside this audiobook. I’ll likely listen to it again in the future and do exactly that.