The first volume of Das Kapital, Karl Marx’s unfinished masterpiece, was published in 1867 to muted praise. Born in a two-room flat in London’s Soho amid political squabbles and personal tragedy, the fruit of Marx’s twenty-year struggle did not at first look like it would have much affect on the world. 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.

In Marx’s Das Kapital, Francis Wheen, the celebrated biographer of Karl Marx, tells the captivating story of the book’s creation and explores its meaning and impact. Far from being a dry economic treatise, Wheen shows that Das Kapital is something like a vast Gothic novel, whose heroes are enslaved by the monster they created: capitalism. Furthermore, Wheen argues, there has been nothing remotely like Marx’s book before or since, and as long as capitalism endures, Das Kapital demands to be understood.