Roses for Gramsci

In summer of 2023, author Andy Merrifield and his family move from the UK to Rome to begin a new life. Soon after his arrival, the author visits Gramsci’s grave and decides to take a volunteer position helping to maintain the cemetery. At the Non-Catholic Cemetery, home also to the great Romantics, Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats, he keeps a watchful eye on Gramsci’s tombstone, talking to some of his visitors, admiring the roses and notes that Gramsci’s guests leave, and communing with the sentinel cat that keeps watch near the gravesite. Thus begins Merrifield’s deep dive into Gramsci’s life almost a century after his death. The result is a stunning portrait that offers fresh insights into nearly every aspect of Gramsci’s often tortured existence: a childhood scarred by severe health problems; his grasp of the culture of workers and peasants; his growing understanding of political economy; his friendship with the economist Piero Sraffa; his frustration trying to communicate with and be father to the son he never saw; his generosity and kindness. 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.