What with the humbling of some of the world's grandest banks, and the improbable success of John Sergeant as a hoofer in Strictly Come Dancing, the world has been moving in mysterious ways. But few as mysterious as the current climb up Germany's bestseller lists of Karl Marx's Das Kapital - a book which, like Finnegans Wake, A Brief History Of Time and À la recherche du temps perdu, tends to be more bought than read.

The philosopher whose aim was to “reveal the law of motion of modern society” has become as fashionable as this season's colour on the catwalk. Marx's German publisher says sales have been soaring since the summer.

Some people must be reading Marx's fifth step of the ten essential steps to communism - “centralisation of credit in the hands of the state” - and smacking their foreheads in recognition, as if something they read in their newspaper horoscope that day actually has just come to pass.

Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France, has been photographed reading Das Kapital. Germany's Finance Minister, Peer Steinbrück, recently said: “Certain parts of Marx's thinking are really not so bad”. Pope Benedict XVI has praised Marx's “great analytical skill”. So far this year 40,000 tourists have visited Marx's birthplace in Trier. And - are you ready? - director Alexander Kluge is making a movie out of Das Kapital.

Das Kapital has long been snubbed as most useful as a doorstop. So will this love on the rebound from capitalism endure? Or will it share the fate of Elyot and Amanda in Noël Coward's Private Lives, who fall so madly in love all over again that they can't fathom why they ever divorced?

In their case, the rapture proved short-lived.