About

I’m a writer and independent scholar, author of more than a dozen books, numerous articles, essays, and reviews in The Nation, Harper’s Magazine, New Left Review, Adbusters, The Guardian, Literary Hub, Brooklyn Rail, Radical Philosophy, Monthly Review, Jacobin, and Dissent. My books have been translated into French, Spanish, German, Dutch, Turkish, Polish, Russian, Chinese, and Korean. I have a doctorate in Human Geography from the University of Oxford (St.Peter’s College) and spent decades teaching and writing about urbanism, social theory and literature, both inside and outside of a conventional university setting. I’ve also published three intellectual biographies on Henri Lefebvre, Guy Debord, and John Berger, a popular existential travelogue, The Wisdom of Donkeys, a manifesto for liberated living, The Amateur, and a book about love and cities, What We Talk About When We Talk About Cities (and Love), inspired by the stories of Raymond Carver. Over the years, I’ve led a somewhat nomadic existence, residing in the UK, US, France, Brazil, and now Italy (Rome). I’ve tried to live, think and write, as my one of my heroes James Joyce once said, “in the broadest way immarginable.” Marx Dead and Alive appeared with Monthly Review Press in November 2020; and in 2023, Monthly Review Press published Beyond Plague Urbanism. In April 2025, my Roses for Gramsci was released by MR Press. I’m currently working on a book on Nikolai Gogol in Rome.

 Andy Merrifield “partakes of the grand tradition of political literary criticism” —Publishers Weekly

“An exciting writer who brings a fresh perspective to the political debate” —New Internationalist

“A man who wants the truth becomes a scholar; a man who wants to give free play to his subjectivity may become a writer; but what should a man do who wants something in between?” —Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities

“I done me best when I was let” — James Joyce, Finnegans Wake