News from the Kate Sharpley Library, February 2019

Co-publishing news: two on the way with AK
My Eighty-One Years of Anarchy: A Memoir by May Picqueray

May Picqueray (1898-1983) missed none of the major events in history during her lifetime. In 1921, she sent a parcel bomb (it exploded without casualties) to the US ambassador in Paris, to protest against the infamous conviction and death sentence of Sacco and Vanzetti. In November 1922 she was commissioned by the CGTU Metal Federation at the Congress to attend the Red Trade Union International in Moscow, where she stood on a table and denounced the congress for feasting while the Russian workers starved. She then refused to shake hands with Leon Trotsky, to whom she had come to ask for the pardon of anarchist political prisoners. Years later, she was closely involved in the movements of May 1968 and the Fight for Larzac in 1975. Picqueray’s story is closely entangled with those of Sébastien Faure, Nestor Makhno, Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, Marius Jacob, and Buenaventura Durruti, among so many others. Her autobiography, My Eighty-one Years of Anarchy, is available here in English for the first time, translated by Paul Sharkey. (due March 2019) https://www.akpress.org/my-eighty-one-years-of-anarchy.html

Sons of Night: Antoine Gimenez’s Memories of the War in Spain, edited by The Gimenologues

A fascinating memoir of the Spanish Civil War as well as a new approach to writing history, The Sons of Night is two books in one. First is Antoine Gimenez’s Memories of the War in Spain, a compelling and lyrical account of his experiences in the Spanish Civil War. The other is In Search of the Sons of Night by the Gimenologues, a group of friends who became historians over the twelve-year adventure of publishing Gimenez’s memoir. The second book, a profoundly innovative form of historiography, records the fascination Gimenez’s account held for the group and the many branching paths of inquiry it led them down. The latter begins with eighty-two “endnotes” to the memoir, each the equivalent of a chapter that follows a particular historical thread or explores a question raised by Gimenez’s text. This is followed by the biographies of various people appearing in the memoir, many based on the friendships the historians formed with the now-elderly revolutionaries. The book closes with an Afterword discussing theoretical issues raised by the memoir and seven appendices. It also includes an Introduction by Dolors Marín Silvestre. (due February 2019) https://www.akpress.org/sons-of-night.html

Feedback welcome. If you send a donation with your sub, say if you already have our May ‘68 pamphlet!

Also forthcoming

A Towering Flame: The Life & Times of the Elusive Latvian Anarchist Peter the Painter by Philip Ruff is to be published in England by Breviary Stuff Publications in 2019. More details at https://www.breviarystuff.org.uk/philip-ruff-a-towering-flame/ (review from KSL Bulletin 95 at https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/6t1h62)

New on our site

Alexander Nakov obituary https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/3r23gn
The Lost Memoirs of the Anarcho-Syndicalist Isaak Tarasiuk https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/2jm776
Tsoyrif, Dina Isaakovna (1900-1937) by Nick Heath https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/tb2t3j

On the web

Lidiap List of digitized anarchist periodicals has been updated http://www.bibliothekderfreien.de/lidiap/eng/index.html