Same time, same carriage, same faces, every day, until one train ride changes everything.

Discover a world of espionage in the late train to Gypsy Hill, the debut thriller from former Home Secretary Alan Johnson,

available to buy now in paperback.

Hello and welcome to The Spectator's Book Club podcast.

I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor of The Spectator, and I'm pleased to announce that my guest

this week is China Mayville, who is probably best known in this country as a novelist

of science fiction and weird fantasy, but is also

a considerable political theorist. And his new book is A Spectre Haunting on the Communist

Manifesto. China, welcome. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Now, for a lot of people, they'll go, why do we want to read about the Communist Manifesto now?

What is it that made this book urgent to you?

Well, I suppose, I mean, there's four reasons, basically.

One is a mere matter of intellectual curiosity that I think that, you know, this is, I think, fairly uncontroversially the most influential political pamphlet in history and therefore should be a matter of interest to anyone of any political hue.

And I would say particularly now at a time when when capitalism is in an extremely parlous state, those of us who find it a source of inspiration

can kind of redouble that inspiration from it. But that doesn't mean that it should be

approached kind of hagiographically or dogmatically. So another reason is to sort of, in certain

instances, defend it from its friends, not uncritically, and to, you know, allow and moot criticisms

where they're warranted, as they certainly are. But finally, I also feel like, although as I say,

I make no bones about my own politics, but I very much wanted this to be a book that people

who aren't of the same political stamp as me can read. And one of the things that I find quite

depressing is the poverty of most of the default arguments against the manifesto. So part of my

pitch, if you like, to its many, many critics, including, I'm sure many people listening to this

...