Roses for Gramsci

by Andy Merrifield

A remarkable personal journey through the life and writings of the great Sardinian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci

In June 2023, author Andy Merrifield and his partner and their daughter moved from the UK to Rome, she to take a new job, he to get his creative juices flowing again, and both to begin a new life. A short time later, he visited Gramsci’s grave at the Non-Catholic Cemetery, home as well to the great Romantics, Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats. Soon he took a volunteer position helping to maintain the cemetery and as it turned out, to keep a watchful eye on Gramsci’s tombstone, admiring the roses and notes that visitors left, talking to some of them and communing with the sentinel cat that kept watch near the gravesite. Thus began Merrifield’s deep dive into Gramsci’s life.

The result is a stunning portrait that offers fresh insights into nearly every aspect of Gramsci’s often tortured a childhood scarred by severe health problems; his growing understanding of political economy; his generosity and kindness; his grasp of the culture of workers and peasants; his friendship with the economist Piero Sraffa; and his frustration trying to communicate with and be father to the son he never saw. Above all, Merrifield illuminates how Gramsci kept his humanity, suffering horribly in prison while writing a revolutionary classic, The Prison Notebooks.

Personal, compassionate, moving—and illustrated with the author’s photographs —Merrifield revives both the legacy and meaning of Gramsci’s work and the dying art of belles lettres. Roses for Gramsci is an evocative and indelible book.

148 pages, Hardcover

Published April 5, 2025

Reviews

[Tacodisc · Rating 4 out of 5]

I discovered Merrifield's touching tribute to Gramsci and the peaceful beauty of his final resting place in Testaccio through the author's teacher, David Harvey, another Marxist of great brilliance and renown. Harvey recently wrote a short piece on the economic ideas of Piero Sraffa (NLR 152), the personal relationships of whom I was happy to see reconstructed and expanded upon in Roses for Gramsci. One could make a strong case that Sraffa kept Gramsci alive in the hell of Mussolini's confinement, along with the revolutionary's sister-in-law, Tatiana, and his own determination to one day see again his sons (the younger of whom he never had a chance to meet). For those new to Gramsci, Merrifield also offers a great way into the thinker's core ideas, intellectual formation, and humanity. Overall, Merrifield's work -- parts travelogue, biography, autobiography, and photojournal -- is a welcome contribution to those portraits of a man, like Giuseppe Fiori's before it, who have kept the great Sardinian's memory alive.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lyrical and a tad polemic.