This Is Not a Book About Marx

By Valérie Lefebvre-Faucher | Translated by Mélissa Bull | Between the Lines (2025)

This is not a book about Karl Marx. Rather, it is an investigation of the women in his life. Valérie Lefebvre-Faucher follows a labyrinth of historical letters, traces the branches on an intellectual family tree, and untangles a web of correspondence, to reveal forgotten connections and to map out the negative spaces in the literature. What emerges is not the familiar portrait of Karl alone in his frame, but a group photo of the whole Marx gang. Upturning the picture we have of the early days of modern communism, Jenny, Eleanor, and Laura, et al. calls on us to acknowledge that humans think and create together, not alone.