In vivid detail, Francis Wheen tells the story of Das Kapital and Karl Marx’s twenty-year
struggle to complete his unfinished masterpiece. Born in a two-room flat in London’s Soho
amid political squabbles and personal tragedy, the first volume of Das Kapital was
published in 1867, to muted praise. But after Marx’s death, the book went on to influence
thinkers, writers, and revolutionaries, from George Bernard Shaw to V. I. Lenin, changing
the direction of twentieth-century history. Wheen’s captivating, accessible book shows that,
far from being a dry economic treatise, Das Kapital is like a vast Gothic novel whose heroes
are enslaved by the monster they created: capitalism. Furthermore, Wheen argues, as long
as capitalism endures, Das Kapital demands to be read and understood.