Malvern staff member Fernando is a New York Review Books Classics enthusiast, and he has an excellent recommendation for y’all…

Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist by Alexander Berkman

Does anybody remember the Homestead Strikers, Henry Clay Frick, or Carnegie Steel? Well, within that mess of history was Russian immigrant/anarchist Berkman, who in 1892 went to prison for attempting to assassinate the brutal industrialist Frick. This book, published six years after his release, captures his experiences while serving fourteen years out of a twenty-two-year sentence. It is a passionate and painful account of prison, politics, and being an outsider.

Also recommended: Novels in Three Lines by Félix Fénéon. Fénéon, active in Parisian anarchist circles, wrote these hilarious and morbid bits as filler for Parisian papers that passed as actual events.