The Anarchists: A Portrait of Civilization at the Close of the Nineteenth Century

Fiction. Germany's Poet-Anarchist John Henry Mackay (1864-1933) wrote this thinly-disguised fictional account of his sojourn to London in 1887. A journey of transformation from revolutionary self-martyrdom to radical self-ownership, the book follows Carrard Auban (a French revolutionary firebrand turned anarcho-individualist) through late-19th century Paris, Chicago, and London. "THE ANARCHISTS is one of the very few books that have a right to live.... For insights into life and manners, for dramatic strength, for incisiveness of phrase, and for cold pitiless logic, no book of this generation equals it"—New York Morning Herald, quoted inLiberty, December 5, 1891.