The 4-star book of the week: when Paris died for ideas
AT dead the monopolists! Jean Vautrin revived the hopes of the Commune in his novel,
The Cry of the People
, in 1998. The quill dipped in the inkwell of Victor Hugo, Honoré de Balzac and Eugène Sue, the writer revived the utopian epic of the Communards. To get out of the political crisis and poverty, the day after the fall of Emperor Napoleon III, these Parisian rebels had erected barricades, established direct democracy, defended the emancipation of women, the taxation of capital, abolition of the death penalty … The Communards had faith in the solidarity and progress of humanity. The rogue president of the Third Republic, Adolphe Thiers, bombed them, shot them in public gardens or on the banks of the Seine. The survivors were finished off in their beds.