Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist

The book begins with the details of how Berkman came to be imprisoned: as an anarchist activist, he had attempted to assassinate wealthy industrialist Henry Clay Frick, manager of the Carnegie steel works in Pennsylvania. Frick had been responsible for crushing the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers during the Homestead Strike, in which nine union workers and seven guards were killed. However, although Berkman shot Frick three times and stabbed him several times in the leg with a poisoned knife, Frick survived, and Berkman was sentenced to 22 years in prison. Berkman had hoped to awaken the consciousness of the oppressed American people—an attentat—but, as the book goes on to detail, America lacked the political culture to interpret his actions. Even fellow prisoners from the union he was defending failed to see his political intent. The bulk of the book is set during Berkman's years in prison. Written in first-person, present-tense English (a language that was new to Berkman), it reads like a diary, though it was in fact written after Berkman's release. It is a coming-of-age story that tracks Berkman's difficult loss of his youthful sentimental idealism as he struggles with the physical and psychological conditions of prison life, at times bringing him to the verge of suicide.