Expropriating Anarchists is many things at once: rigorous research, a gripping chronicle, a portrait of an era, and, above all, a thrilling story. The scenes that are reconstructed seem to come straight out of an adventure novel, even though they actually took place in Buenos Aires and other cities in Latin America and Europe just over a century ago.

There are masked bandits, bombings, bank robberies where, according to the newspapers of the time, the phrase “hands up!” was a disturbing novelty. There are prison breaks, proletarian revenge, counterfeiting, and incredible chases. All narrated with the fierce pace of early crime films.

Osvaldo Bayer takes as his point of comparison the figure of Robin Hood, that likeable character who devoted himself to taking, stealing, and expropriating from the powerful, and he debates without simplification the idealistic, ruthless, and very real acts of the anarchists who, in addition to leading an adventurous life as bandits, proposed to demolish an unjust society.