It’s a classic and unabashed example of fiction-as-propaganda that makes no pretense of objectivity. It exists purely to make a point about class relations.

Cipriano Ricardo Flores Magón (September 16, 1874 — November 21, 1922) was a noted Mexican anarchist and social reform activist. He was born on Mexican Independence Day, in San Antonio Eloxochitlán, Oaxaca. He died at Leavenworth Penitentiary in Kansas, USA…. He was one of the major thinkers of the Mexican Revolution and the Mexican revolutionary movement in the Partido Liberal Mexicano. Flores Magón organised with the Wobblies (IWW) and edited the Mexican anarchist newspaper Regeneración, which aroused the workers against the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz.

Magón is most famous as an activist and revolutionary, but he also wrote a very short story, The Soldier (online at the Kate Sharpley Library).

Pranav Kumar has had enough. He’s sick and tired of being a corporate drone convincing people that their lives are meaningless without the newest product he’s peddling. He hates that commercialism is the new mantra and people actually believe that you are what you own. Pranav Kumar wants to change the world.

But how does one man make a whole country question the way we are when no one is interested in listening?

Pranav and his friends decide to capture the eyeballs of the nation and shake up the system. Their methods are unorthodox, their message unique. They take over a TV station, expose an environmental scam, strike out at patrons of brothels, sabotage a glitzy fashion show, and paint-bomb a local train.

But as the Anarchists of Mumbai ignite sparks of a much larger movement, they realize that doing good comes at a price, that the means are as important as the ends and that being hunted by the Mumbai police is perhaps better than being hunted by contract-killers.

I’ll be curious to find out if the author actually has an understanding of anarchism, as he has said in an interview that “Karl Marx was an anarchist and people of the Greenpeace movement are anarchist because of their unique way of changing the system.” Ah well. Still looks promising.

Ba Jin (1904–2005) is considered one of the most important figures in Chinese literary history. He was introduced to anarchism at the age of 15 by Kropotkin’s writing and he translated many anarchist works into Chinese for publication by a Shanghai newspaper. He worked on behalf of the struggle to free Sacco & Vanzetti and corresponded with Vanzetti until the Bostonian was executed. His most famous novel, Family, is a work critiquing the Chinese feudal system and promotes the concept of youth in revolt. In the 1950s, perhaps due to fear of persecution, he disavowed the anarchism of his youth, and even went to far as to purge his own works of their anarchistic content. Regardless, he was branded as a counter-revolutionary by the Cultural Revolution and was prevented from writing for years. When the Cultural Revolution passed, he rose in party favor and found himself Chairperson of the Chinese Writer’s Association. In later writings, he alluded to possible resentment of his abandonment of anarchism.

Wikipedia:

Ba Jin

Fiction in English available from Amazon.com

• Family
• Cold nights
• Selected works of Ba Jin
• Ward Four

Derrick Jensen (1960–) is a radical environmentalist and author and is considered one of the most influential anti-civilization thinkers. He is more famous for his non-fiction works such as A Culture of Make-Believe and Endgame, but he has also written a couple of novels, a graphic novel, and a book about teaching creative writing—a subject which he has taught in both prison and college.

Author’s site:

derrickjensen.org

Wikipedia:

Derrick Jensen

Available directly from Derrick Jensen:

Both the novel Songs of the Dead and the graphic novel As the World Burns are available directly from Derrick Jensen’s site.

Jaroslav Hašek (1883–1923), a Czech whose satirical anti-war novel The Good Soldier Švejk and His Fortunes in the World War has been translated into more than 60 languages, was a notorious anarchist and political organizer in Prague. He spent a month in jail for assaulting an officer and he published an anarchist newspaper. In his later life, he shied away from his anarchist leanings and was a member of the Bolshevik Party. At one point, while employed by The Animal Journal, he was fired for writing about imaginary animals as though they were real.

Wikipedia:

Jaroslav Hašek

Novel available from Amazon.com:

• The Good Soldier Svejk: and His Fortunes in the World War

M. John Harrison (1945–), author of the anarchist The Centauri Device among many other novels, said the following in an interview with Andy Darlington (S.F. Spectrum No.8, 1985):

We must accept—given that [all viewpoints come down to subjectivity]—that we must operate personally. I mean, that’s why I’m still an anarchist. If all value-judgements are subjective which they are by definition, linguistically and in the real world, then any evaluation we make of the universe is personal. It therefore behooves us to act with dignity, and act personally. Not to club together in big groups and say “because we have agreed on this personal evaluation as universal, from now on it will be universal, and we will hit anybody who doesn’t agree with us!”

Author’s site:

mjohnharrison.com

Author’s blog:

Ambient Hotel

Wikipedia:

M. John Harrison

Fiction available from Amazon.com:

• The Committed Men
• Viriconium Trilogy
• The Centauri Device
• Ice Monkey and Other Stories
• Climbers
• The Wild Road
• The Golden Cat
• The Knot Garden
• Nonesuch
• Light
• Things That Never Happen
• Anima
• Nova Swing

Jimmy T. Hand (1984–) is an anarchist adventurer (to use his words) and writer. He’s written two autobiographical novellas, In the Hall of the Mountain King and The Road to Either Or. He ran away from home, never finished high school, and never regretted either. He’s been a part of anti-globalization, anti-war, and anti- logging activism, and has a tendency to travel.

Works available online:

The Seduction of the Wind and The World Below & Here Comes the Fucking Circus are available online for download from Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness. “Funny Thing About Horizons” available in issue #5 of SteamPunk Magazine.