Les Pardaillan

Another intriguing series with Starace covers has whetted my appetite. Michel Zévaco (1860-1918) was an anti-clerical anarchist author and publisher who also, in his final year, turned to film direction. (Ties between pulp authors and screen production were extremely close at this point: think of the collaboration between Louis Feuillade and Arthur Bernède on Judex). From his early journalism (fined for praising Ravachol, a supporter of Dreyfus) he moved into serial novels. Les Pardaillan was the first of an eponymous series of historical novels, probably inspired by Jules Michelet but clearly also owing a great deal to Eugène Sue, with (apparently) an abominable villain pitted against the anti-authoritarian hero. As ever, the highly prolific turnover of linked novels seems to have driven the narrative into ever more complicated byways. Zévaco seems to have been popular in Iran, which (following the success of Persian translations of Dumas) couldn't get enough of French historical fiction. One wonders if reprints might carry the Ayatollah Khamenei's comment that 'I have read most of his novels in the past'.