Antonio Gramsci

A compelling narrative of Gramsci’s life and times with a lucid exposition of his intellectual achievements ... It is beautifully and sensitively written, sober in tone, wise in judgment and full of striking aperçus. * Perspectives *
Gramsci is probably the most brilliant of all Marx’s intellectual followers. He was also a real historical actor, secret leader of the Italian Communist Party under Fascism. Pearmain’s biography places the first fact in the context of the second: he has written a book that, just as he aimed to do, re-places Gramsci from merely academic treatments back into “politics and history”. This biography enables one to understand how this extraordinary organic intellectual can have so much to say that speaks to us still today. His difficult existence — in ill-health, as beleaguered political prisoner, and in a world that gradually seemed to forget all that he holds dear — casts real light on how his thought became increasingly ‘revisionist’ during the course of his (too-short) life, and on how the Gramscian net of concepts such as ‘subaltern’ and ‘hegemony’ is far more relevant to our times than most more-dogmatically Marxian theory. Pearmain’s account is simultaneously humble and authoritative, grounded sharply in Gramsci’s time and yet dripping with relevances to our own. It is faithful and therefore poignant. It deserves to be read. * Professor Rupert Read, University of East Anglia. *