Book of the month, July 2008

TORRES, Flausino – Diário da Batalha de Praga – prefácio de Fernando Rosas; apresentação e notas de Paulo Torres Bento. Porto: Afrontamento, 2008. ISBN 978-972-36-0956-1

“It is certain that this diary... is that of a “battle”, a battle not only of some of the Czechoslovakian people against the invader and the dark forces that re-emerged from the shadows and recent past to block the “new course” of Dubcek and his team of “reformers”. A battle also, and for many a decisive and ultimate one at that, of many Portuguese communist militants (beginning by those exiled in Eastern Europe) for the integrity of an ideal they felt was being rescued and reborn by the so-called “socialism with a human face” announced by the “Prague Spring”, namely the changes carried out in the wake of the programme of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party since January of 1968, when Dubcek, the face of change, assumes leadership of the Party and, thus, of the State. A battle that fully inspires the communist intellectual Flausino Torres, then assistant professor of Culture and Portuguese Language at the Karlova University in Prague, and several of his comrades in an exile made up of many doubts and disappointments...” (words from the preface, by Fernando Rosas, freely translated in English)

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