NEW BOOK AND EVENTS:
THE LETTERS OF ROSA LUXEMBERG
Edited by ANNELIES LASCHITZA, GEORG ADLER and PETER HUDIS
Published 28 February 2011
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LONDON EVENTS – made possible by the support of Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung:
Monday 7 March at the Swedenborg Society, 7pm:
The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg launch at the Swedenborg Society - a panel discussion with chair Susie Orbach, award–winning playwright David Edgar, editor Dr Lea Haro and writer and cultural historian Lesley Chamberlain, with readings by Dame Harriet Walter. Booking and details here: http://www.versobooks.com/events/99-the-letters-of-rosa-luxemburg-launch-at-the-swedenborg-society
Tuesday 8 March at the LRB bookshop, 7pm:
The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg launch on International Women’s Day, founded 100 years ago by Luxemburg’s close friend, comrade and confidante Clara Zetkin, to whom many of the letters are addressed. A discussion about socialism and feminism with Dr Nina Power, Lea Haro, Lisa Appignanesi and chair Natalie Hanman, editor of Guardian Comment is Free. Booking and details here: http://www.versobooks.com/events/107-the-letters-of-rosa-luxemburg-launch-at-the-london-review-bookshop
Wednesday 9 March at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, 6pm:
Rosa Luxemburg (1986) film screening followed by rare Q&A with the director Margarethe von Trotta, as part of Birds Eye View Film Festival 2011, celebrating women in filmmaking. Booking and more details here: http://www.versobooks.com/events/88-margarethe-von-trotta%27s-rosa-luxemburg-%281986%29
Tuesday 22 March at the LSE, 6.30pm:
6.30pm 'Freedom is always freedom for the one who thinks differently': Rosa Luxemburg for our times A Public Lecture co-hosted by the Gender Institute and The Ralph Miliband Programme. Booking and details here: http://www.versobooks.com/events/94-%27freedom-is-always-freedom-for-the-one-who-thinks-differently%27-rosa-luxemburg-for-our-times
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“I want to affect people like a clap of thunder, to inflame their minds not by speechifying but with the breadth of my vision, the strength of my conviction, and the power of my expression.” ROSA LUXEMBURG
“Rosa goes on being our source of fresh water in thirsty times”. EDUARDO GALEANO
“Intrepid, incorruptible, passionate and gentle. Imagine as you read between the lines of what she wrote, the expression of her eyes. She loved workers and birds. She danced with a limp. Everything about her fascinates and rings true. One of the immortals.” JOHN BERGER
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March 5th, 2011 will mark 140 years since the birth of a figure who should be as well-known and celebrated as Che Guevara: her name is Rosa Luxemburg. Inaugurating a decade-long project to properly restore the life and thought of this extraordinary woman, Verso presents THE LETTERS OF ROSA LUXEMBURG.
Blending a passionate sensibility and a steely intellect with an unshakeable commitment to revolutionary socialism, ‘Red Rosa’ is one of the great personalities of the twentieth century. Disappointed in love and physically infirm, a Pole and a Jew, the iconic revolutionary was nonetheless dauntless in her climb to the top of German Social Democracy struggles: a movement often hostile to independently-minded women.
Resolute and unwavering in her opposition to the First World War and any form of injustice, Luxemburg began her revolutionary activities at the age of 16 and at the time of her tragic death, led the Spartacist league with Karl Liebknecht. Following the failed Spartacist uprising against the Weimar government, Luxemburg was murdered by two soldiers and her body dumped in a canal.
Exuding the atmosphere of her times, Luxemburg’s intimate letters to friends, lovers, and colleagues include many to prominent figures in the international labour and socialist movements whom she counted amongst her closest friends: Leo Jogiches, Karl Kautsky, Clara Zetkin and Karl Liebknech. The most comprehensive collection of her correspondence ever published in English—over half of it translated here for the very first time, the letters illuminate the inner life of their thoughtful writer. For Red Rosa, writing letters was part of her daily routine, a passion, and a source of strength in overcoming solitude in prison.
Readers will discover a multifaceted woman, who was at once a self-effacing humourist, an economic and social theorist, a political activist, journalist and lyrical stylist with a strong bond with nature and the spiritual. Even for those who are familiar with her work, this collection provides a new, deeper appreciation of the complexity of this remarkable individual, artist, and political figure, in all her wit, eloquence and warmth.
THE LETTERS OF ROSA LUXEMBURG is a companion volume to THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ROSA LUXEMBURG which will make her entire body of work available for the first time: currently, less than a quarter of her total writings are available in English. It will contain all of her books, pamphlets, essays, articles, letters and manuscripts, many of which have never before appeared in English. It will also include writings of hers that have only recently been discovered. All of her previously published work in English will be newly translated from German, Polish, Russian, and Yiddish originals. THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ROSA LUXEMBURG will be published in fourteen volumes, each with comprehensive annotations and introductions. The project is supported by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung and Karl Dietz Verlag.
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“One of the most insightful theorists and original personalities of modern radicalism, Rosa Luxemburg deserves a new hearing in light of the complex problems facing efforts at social transformation today ... Her painstaking analysis and opposition to the logic of capital speaks especially powerfully to our time, poised as we are at the edge of an economic, political and ecological catastrophe.” Peter Hudis, from the Introduction
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ROSA LUXEMBURG was a Polish-born Jewish revolutionary and one of the greatest theoretical minds of the European socialist movement. An activist in Germany and Poland, the author of numerous classic works, she participated in the founding of the German Communist Party and the Spartacist insurrection in Berlin in 1919. She was assassinated in January of the year and has become a hero of socialist, communist and feminist movements around the world.
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ISBN: 978 1 84467 453 4 $39.95 / £25.99 / Hardback / 512 pages
THE LETTERS OF ROSA LUXEMBURG
http://www.versobooks.com/books/512-the-letters-of-rosa-luxemburg
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