A major figure of the international left, Rosa Luxemburg, stands in the pantheon of Marxist thinkers – but besides being a fighter, she was also a unique woman with a love for life, courage, and revolutionary determination. In an era when women were confined to domestic chores, Rosa burst into the world: the book describes with images her epic life, how she overcame her disability, how she left behind the Polish countryside and became a citizen – and revolutionary – of Europe.

Rosa Luxemburg remained a member of a leftist minority that opposed World War I and nationalism. She opened hostile fronts against both warmongers and the reformists of her own party. She was imprisoned, tortured, and murdered, fully aware that the revolution she had dreamed of was doomed to fail. Kate Evans' book is not only an illustrated biography, but the chronicle of a revolution that failed miserably, the summary of an important work that almost changed the course of History.