Reportage Press

Reportage Press would be delighted if you could join us in celebrating the publication of '89:The Unfinished Revolution by Nick Thorpe

at

The Hungarian Cultural Centre
10 Maiden Lane
Covent Garden
WC2E 7NA

on

November 10th 2009 - 6.30-8.30 pm


"This is a personal view, from ground level, of a revolution which never quite finis...hed. Of how it re-emerges, in demonstrations and uprisings, on a regular basis. How the demons of the past - of collaboration, of unsatisfied national identity, above all of poverty - continue to haunt the present.

Blood drips on Thorpe’s head as he tries to escape the Romanian secret police, with a dissident's statement hidden in his clothes. Then as the Hungarian government prepares to expel him, he becomes a pawn in the Cold War as the British threaten to retaliate. Through the autumn and winter of 1989, Thorpe hops from revolution to revolution, from Budapest to Prague, Leipzig to East Berlin. And gets to Romania in time for the bloody finale.

But, with the victory of democracy, his work was only just beginning. Thorpe guides us through the dramas and traumas of the 1990s, the years of 'jungle capitalism' through a taxi blockade in Hungary, and the miners’ invasion of Bucharest. He camps with Vaclav Havel - who borrows his sleeping bag. As Yugoslavia collapses, he reports from Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia and Macedonia. The book concludes in 2009, with the impact of the crisis of capitalism, 20 years after the crisis of communism."Read More