Books published by Verso Books

A literary fiction about climate disaster and a scientist imploding on a journey to the AntarcticZeno Hintermeier is a scientist working as a travel guide on an Antarctic cruise ship, encouraging the wealthy to marvel at the least explored continent and to open their eyes to its rapid degradation. It is a troubling turn in the life of an idealistic glaciologist. Now in his early sixties, Zeno bewails the loss of his beloved glaciers, the disintegration of his marriage, and the foundering of his increasingly irrelevant career. Troubled in conscience and goaded by the smug complacency of the passengers in his charge, he starts to plan a desperate gesture that will send a wake-up call to an overheating world.The Lamentations of Zeno is an extraordinary evocation of the fragile and majestic wonders to be found at a far corner of the globe, written by a novelist who is a renowned travel writer. Poignant and playful, the novel recalls the experimentation of high-modernist fiction without compromising a limpid sense of place or the pace of its narrative. It is a portrait of a man in extremis, a haunting and at times irreverent tale that approaches the greatest challenge of our ageperhaps of our entire history as a speciesfrom an impassioned human angle.

Louis Althusser's renowned short text ';Ideology andIdeological State Apparatuses' radically transformed theconcept of the subject, the understanding of the stateand even the very frameworks of cultural, political andliterary theory. The text has influenced thinkers such asJudith Butler, Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj iek.The piece is, in fact, an extract from a much longer book,On the Reproduction of Capitalism, until now unavailablein English. Its publication makes possible a reappraisalof seminal Althusserian texts already available in English,their place in Althusser's oeuvre and the relevance ofhis ideas for contemporary theory. On the Reproductionof Capitalism develops Althusser's conception of historicalmaterialism, outlining the conditions of reproductionin capitalist society and the revolutionary struggle forits overthrow. Written in the afterglow of May 1968, the text addressesa question that continues to haunt us today: in a societythat proclaims its attachment to the ideals of liberty andequality, why do we witness the ever-renewed reproductionof relations of domination? Both a conceptuallyinnovative text and a key theoretical tool for activists,On the Reproduction of Capitalism is an essential additionto the corpus of the twentieth-century Left.

Today, the Indian state claims to possess a harmonious territorial unity, to embody the values of a stable political democracy, and to adhere to a steadfast religious impartiality. Even many of those critical of the inequalities of Indian society still underwrite such claims. But does the ';idea of India' correspond to the realities of the Union? The Indian Ideology suggests that the roots of the republic's current ills go very deep, historically. They lie, it argues, in the way the struggle for independence culminated in the transfer of power from British rule to Congress in a divided subcontinent, not least in the roles played by Gandhi, as the great architect of the movement, and Nehru, as his appointed successor, in the catastrophe of partition. Only an honest reckoning with that disaster, Perry Anderson argues, offers an understanding of what was has gone wrong since independence. Revisiting a century's history, and sifting the uncomfortable realities from the ideology, Anderson offers an alternative way to look at the story of the nation, and the nature of a state that is less in conflict with caste than built upon it.

The all-encompassing embrace of world capitalism at the beginning of the twenty-first century was generally attributed to the superiority of competitive markets. Globalization had appeared to be the natural outcome of this unstoppable process. But today, with global markets roiling and increasingly reliant on state intervention to stay afloat, it has become clear that markets and states aren't straightforwardly opposing forces.In this groundbreaking work, Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin demonstrate the intimate relationship between modern capitalism and the American state, including its role as an ';informal empire' promoting free trade and capital movements. Through a powerful historical survey, they show how the US has superintended the restructuring of other states in favor of competitive markets and coordinated the management of increasingly frequent financial crises.The Making of Global Capitalism, through its highly original analysis of the first great economic crisis of the twenty-first century, identifies the centrality of the social conflicts that occur within states rather than between them. These emerging fault lines hold out the possibility of new political movements transforming nation states and transcending global markets.

Tackling the myth of a post-racial society.

Why do people work for other people? This seemingly nave question is at the heart of Lordon's argument. To complement Marx's partial answers, especially in the face of the disconcerting spectacle of the engaged, enthusiastic employee, Lordon brings to bear a "e;Spinozist anthropology"e; that reveals the fundamental role of affects and passions in the employment relationship, reconceptualizing capitalist exploitation as the capture and remolding of desire. A thoroughly materialist reading of Spinoza's Ethics allows Lordon to debunk all notions of individual autonomy and self-determination while simultaneously saving the ideas of political freedom and liberation from capitalist exploitation. Willing Slaves of Capital is a bold proposal to rethink capitalism and its transcendence on the basis of the contemporary experience of work.