'It is only by accident that I am whirling in the maelstrom of history,' Rosa Luxemburg wrote from prison in September 1915; 'actually I was born to tend geese.' The subject of this absorbing biography is Luxemburg the goose-girl, the 'hurt child' who, according to Elzbieta Ettinger, lurked within the 'famous revolutionary'. Drawing on previously unknown private letters, this book portrays Luxemburg as a socially insecure and emotionally vulnerable woman. The question left unresolved is how a person so frail and fallible could have become one of the most charismatic figures in the history of revolutionary Marxism.

LRB 4 June 1987 | PDF Download