Ballad of the Anarchist Bandits: The Crime Spree that Gripped Belle Epoque Paris

by John Merriman Narrated by Peter Ganim

Overview

The thrilling story of the Bonnot Gang, a band of anarchist bank robbers whose crimes terrorized Belle Ã?oque Paris, and whose escapades reflected the fast-paced, dizzyingly modern, and increasingly violent period on the eve of World War I.

For six terrifying months in 1911-1912, the citizens of Paris were gripped by a violent crime streak. A group of bandits went on a rampage throughout the city and its suburbs, robbing banks and wealthy Parisians, killing anyone who got in their way, and always managing to stay one step ahead of the police. But Jules Bonnot and the Bonnot Gang weren't just ordinary criminals; they were anarchists, motivated by the rampant inequality and poverty in Paris.

John Merriman tells this story through the eyes of two young, idealistic lovers: Victor Kibaltchiche (later the famed Russian revolutionary and writer Victor Serge) and Rirette Maîejean, who chronicled the Bonnot crime spree in the radical newspaper L'Anarchie. While wealthy Parisians frequented restaurants on the Champs-�ysé, attended performances at the magnificent new opera house, and enjoyed the decadence of the so-called Belle �oque, Victor, Rirette, and their friends occupied a vast sprawl of dank apartments, bleak canals, and smoky factories. Victor and Rirette rejected the violence of Bonnot and his cronies, but to the police it made no difference. Victor was imprisoned for years for his anarchist beliefs, Bonnot was hunted down and shot dead, and his fellow bandits were sentenced to death by guillotine or lifelong imprisonment.

Fast-paced and gripping, Ballad of the Anarchist Bandits is a tale of idealists and lost causes--and a vivid evocation of Paris in the dizzying years before the horrors of World War I were unleashed.

Editorial Reviews

NOVEMBER 2017 - AudioFile

This audiobook looks beyond the opulence of Paris in the Belle Époque, exploring the civil unrest—and ultimately extreme violence—brought on by political corruption, worker exploitation, and deep class divides. With narrator Peter Ganim’s buttery smooth voice and excellent French pronunciations, the present day fades away, and early 1900s Paris comes alive. Ganim evokes images of a grand city teeming with artistic and industrial progress, then dispassionately describes in detail the hopeless plight of the lower-class workers. As a result, listeners can feel on a visceral level the dissonance between two versions of the same city. Sympathy for the violent anarchists and their crime spree may be a step too far, but listeners are asked to consider how systematic oppression can lead to extreme actions. A.T.N. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

Publishers Weekly

08/28/2017
Historian Merriman (Massacre: The Life and Death of the Paris Commune) recounts the 1911 bank robbery and subsequent manhunt that rocked the relatively placid Third French Republic in the last days of the belle époque. He takes readers to the outskirts of Paris, to the working-class neighborhood of Romainville, the site of an anarchist commune. The members of the Bonnot Gang met there, including petty criminal André Soudy and the vicious Jules Bonnot. Merriman’s electrifying narrative follows the gang on their crime spree, from the bank heist to a gruesome home burglary and murder, along with a host of other crimes. The tension builds as Paris erupts in mass hysteria and the police slowly close in on the criminals, resulting in a standoff of epic proportions featuring dynamite and unfolding before thousands of picnicking spectators, eager to witness justice. While the criminals themselves are certainly fascinating, equally so are Rirette Maîtrejean and Victor Kibaltchiche, young lovers caught up with the wrong crowd and arrested and tried under France’s “scoundrel laws,” which ensured harsh punishments for criminal collaborators. In addition to his vivid portrayals of the principal characters and events, the author provides informative context to the crimes, outlining the severe exploitation of workers in this supposedly idyllic time in Parisian history. This is a nuanced and fascinating dissection of the events by a riveting storyteller with a sympathetic (but unsentimental) view of the anarchists’ cause. (Oct.)

From the Publisher

"Merriman's fresh look at the Bonnot gang, whose violent crime spree riveted and terrified Belle Époque Parisians, emphasizes the unforgiving socioeconomic inequalities of the era and the allure of anarchism to the desperate....The result is a lively, erudite work that, without romanticizing the Bonnot gang's crimes, manages to humanize those in their milieu, and perhaps suggest lessons for the present."—Booklist, starred review

"Merriman uncovers the dark side of the famed belle époque, offering a fresh perspective on the reality of life for much of the city's population.... [A] revelatory history...of the dire consequences of inequality and injustice."—Kirkus Reviews

"I found this book fascinating: a Bonnie and Clyde story set in the heady Paris of a century ago, a Paris etched by Merriman with erudition, a fine eye for lively detail, and a lightness of touch. It also fills in, in a way we have not had before, an important tragic early episode in the life of the man who later became one of the 20th century's great eyewitnesses to tyranny, Victor Serge."—Adam Hochschild, author of Spain in Our Hearts

"Once again, John Merriman has written a gripping tale about fin-de-siècle Paris. By tracing the slowly merging destinies of the Bonnot Gang, a group of anarchist-inspired criminals, and Victor Kibaltchiche and Rirette Maîtrejean, an anarchist couple who refused violence, Merriman has written an absorbing tragedy that also plumbs the history of radical politics in France."—Robert D. Zaretsky, author of A Life Worth Living: Albert Camus and the Quest for Meaning and Boswell's Enlightenment

"No one knows the rebellious underworlds of fin-de-siècle France as well as John Merriman, and no one can write about them as vividly. Ballad of the Anarchist Bandits is a beautifully told story, by turns comic, tragic, hopeful, despairing, and intensely human."—David A. Bell, author of Shadows of Revolution: Reflections on France, Past and Present

"In Ballad of the Anarchist Bandits John Merriman spins a true crime story full of intrigue, passion, and political significance. He paints an unflinching picture of a society torn apart by inequality and of the people who took desperate measures to try to remedy it. A compelling perspective that is richly resonant today."—Maya Jasanoff, author of Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary War

"The author's Parisian scholarship shines as he builds a vivid and meticulously detailed image of the period, creating the foundation for a multi-layered and three-dimensional story of what happens when oppressed people are pushed to their limits. Merriman's especially timely work gives us a robust understanding of the revolutionary thought process, encouraging us to question what lies beneath society's shining surface."—Library Journal

"Electrifying.... In addition to his vivid portrayals of the principal characters and events, the author provides informative context to the crimes, outlining the severe exploitation of workers in this supposedly idyllic time in Parisian history. This is a nuanced and fascinating dissection of the events by a riveting storyteller with a sympathetic (but unsentimental) view of the anarchists' cause."—Publishers Weekly

"John Merriman's Ballad of the Anarchist Bandits tells another story of the Belle Époque-not the romance of the 'Ville Lumiére' with its dazzling palaces and grand hotels but the dark tale of a city in the grip of a crime wave...Merriman's subject is the rise and fall of the Bonnot Gang, but he shrewdly wraps his historical analysis in the arms of a love story."—MarilynStasio, The New York Times Book Review

"France's long history of antiterrorist legislation is given a timely appraisal in Ballad of the Anarchist Bandits, a riveting history of the Bonnot Gang, the brutal band of murdering anarchists who rattled the City of Light in the early 20th century....a vivid recounting. [Merriman's] eye for detail is particularly acute."—Tobias Grey, TheWall Street Journal

Ballad of the Anarchist Bandits reads like a novel.... engaging and suspenseful, and the moral underlying in the story, wealth inequality, rings true today.... a must-read for fans of history and true crime alike. It grips the reader and pulls you into a tale so wonderful you almost can't believe it's true.—DanArel, HuffPost

"Author John Merriman delivers a ripping good yarn with a lineup of compelling characters .... [the book] leaves the reader with some timely questions about where a country should set the balance between security and civil rights for people with unpopular views."—MinneapolisStar Tribune

"Thorough and sweeping... Merriman's book addresses larger questions about anarchist ideologies and the forces of order in Belle Époque society.... He manages, through imagistic detail and pacing, to build suspense even when the historical outcome is known.... We know we are in expert hands."—H-France Review

Library Journal

09/01/2017
The ever-churning machine of Parisian society was at an extraordinary point before World War I. Art, music, and literature experienced a transformation via the works of visionaries such as Pablo Picasso, Claude Debussy, and Marcel Proust. Electricity buzzed throughout the city. This was Belle Époque—a so-called beautiful era of peace, hope, prosperity, and renaissance, marked by technological and scientific advances that promised a bright and exciting future. But simmering under all this joie de vivre was an underclass who barely earned enough to survive, and sometimes didn't. The inequality and injustice eventually propelled angry revolutionaries to take Robin Hood-esque measures into their own hands. Merriman (Charles Seymour Professor of History, Yale Univ.; Massacre: The Life and Death of the Paris Commune) focuses largely on two anarchists in particular: Victor Kibaltchiche and Rirette Maitrejean. The author's Parisian scholarship shines as he builds a vivid and meticulously detailed image of the period, creating the foundation for a multilayered and three-dimensional story of what happens when oppressed people are pushed to their limits. VERDICT Merriman's especially timely work gives us a robust understanding of the revolutionary thought process, encouraging us to question what lies beneath a society's shining surface.—Erin Entrada Kelly, Philadelphia

NOVEMBER 2017 - AudioFile

This audiobook looks beyond the opulence of Paris in the Belle Époque, exploring the civil unrest—and ultimately extreme violence—brought on by political corruption, worker exploitation, and deep class divides. With narrator Peter Ganim’s buttery smooth voice and excellent French pronunciations, the present day fades away, and early 1900s Paris comes alive. Ganim evokes images of a grand city teeming with artistic and industrial progress, then dispassionately describes in detail the hopeless plight of the lower-class workers. As a result, listeners can feel on a visceral level the dissonance between two versions of the same city. Sympathy for the violent anarchists and their crime spree may be a step too far, but listeners are asked to consider how systematic oppression can lead to extreme actions. A.T.N. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2017-06-27
While artists and writers rebelled against aesthetic conventions, anarchists terrorized pre-World War I Paris.The author of several histories of Parisian unrest, Merriman (History/Yale Univ.; Massacre: The Life and the Death of the Paris Commune, 2014, etc.) uncovers the dark side of the famed belle epoque, offering a fresh perspective on the reality of life for much of the city's population. While Proust, Picasso, and Apollinaire pursued their art, laborers and craftspeople barely subsisted on low wages, facing destitution if they became ill or were laid off. Angry revolutionaries railed against worker exploitation, political corruption, and injustice; some, calling themselves "illegalists," believed that "any acts against society were justified," including theft. Central to Merriman's revelatory history are two self-proclaimed anarchists: Belgian-born Victor Kibaltchiche (he later changed his surname to Serge), the son of Russian émigrés, and his companion, French-born Rirette Maîtrejean. Merriman draws heavily on their memoirs, supplemented by archival sources and other contemporary testimony. Unfortunately, many quoted passages are not introduced by speaker, forcing readers to turn to the endnotes to make sense of the citations. Victor and Rirette did not condone violence. However, like their fellow anarchists, they believed "that once states had been destroyed, people could live in harmony in natural groupings. They believed fervently that people were basically good" but that government, capitalism, organized religion, and professional armies fomented conflict. Merriman focuses on a particular wave of robberies committed by the Bonnot Gang, led by Jules Bonnot, a sometime mechanic who could not bear anyone in authority. With a string of arrests behind him, in 1911, he and his armed accomplices—"not a finely organized group, but rather a band in flux"—launched into robberies and, later, murder. The author details the aggressive police response and the alarming newspaper articles that incited public panic. Inevitably, Victor and Rirette were swept up as suspects, "accused of being intellectuals who encouraged illegalist criminality," although they had no connection to Bonnot. Chilling historical evidence of the dire consequences of inequality and injustice.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170032518
Publisher:	Hachette Audio
Publication date:	10/03/2017
Edition description:	Unabridged

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