Letter to Maurice Thorez

Paris: Editions Présence africaine, 1957.

12mo (7 1/16 x 4 1/2 inches; 180 x 113 mm), 15, [1] pages in stapled green-gray wrappers, with errata slip pasted to recto of lower wrapper (soft cover).

A letter from the Martinique poet and politician Aimé Césaire to Maurice Thorez, secretary general of the French Communist Party. Césaire announces his resignation from the party, citing Stalin's crimes and the party's treatment of nonwhite people. Césaire's letter is dated October 24, 1956, one day after the start of the Hungarian Uprising against the Soviet Union and eight months following Nikita Khrushchev's "secret speech" documenting Stalin's crimes.

"I think I have said enough to make it plain that it's neither Marxism nor Communism I repudiate; that the use certain people have made of Marxism and Communism is what I condemn," Césaire writes. "That what I want is that Marxism and Communism be harnessed into the service of colored peoples, and not colored peoples into the service of Marxism and Communism." (pages 11-12). Pamphlet entirely in English.

While this pamphlet is widely held by institutions, it's uncommon in commerce. SCARCE.

CONDITION: Light soiling to wrappers, some light creasing to pages but clean and unmarked. A Very Good or better copy of a scarce publication.