zachari's reviews
364 reviews

This book quite possibly represents the beachhead of a new genre, one which affectively synthesizes biography & social history, visual art & theoretical overview, sweeping narrative & richly textured manifesto.

Though not the first priority for all readers, I was particularly inspired by the novel's radical alignment of form and content: just as Luxemburg spent her life demonstrating not only the possibility, but the necessity of the co-penetration of analysis and activism, this text not only represents her praxis, but replicates it through its well-woven multiplicity of focuses, bringing energy to political economy and world-spanning context to the most intensely personal moments.

In this and in other aspects, the novel goes a long way to redressing Rosa's under-emphasized influence on Leftist causes. I highly recommend to anyone interested in learning about socialism, feminism, political aesthetics, & the role of history in winning a new world.

A loosely-veiled parable for queer childhood with genre-appropriate phantasmagoric illustrations, good for a rainy afternoon.

This is a text best read in the context of a seminar or book club. Doubting that I fully understand the implications of its form and the self-reflective, highly interwoven prosaic dance of its content, I hope I will have the opportunity to return to it as some future point and discuss it with others--ideally with others whose lived experience affords a more apt context for approach then my own. In the meantime, I have only to say that I very much admired the authors "yes, and" (as opposed to "yes, but") style, which force me to reanalyze many easily otherwise passively rendered experiences, and which bore a helpful connection to improve, a medium with which I have some degree of connection.

At times interesting, but not the best articulation of Freud's methodology, leaving much to be interested from the reader--which works alright for the psychoanalytic elements of the book, but deeply suffers in it's historiography and sociology.

Note: An interesting example of how close Freud (unwittingly) comes to embracing certain Marxian frameworks.