PEN World Voices: Revolution: A User's Manual
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Adam Michnik, Baltasar Garzón, Gioconda Belli, G. M. Tamás, and Christopher Hitchens, moderator
In a year of anniversaries recalling key moments in the last century's complicated romance with revolution (outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, suppression of the Hungarian uprising, Spain's dramatic moment of transition to democracy, and the birth of Solidarity), activist intellectuals reflect on the current status of our centuries-old faith in revolution and what its future may be.
This event is co-sponsored by PEN American Center in association with PEN World Voices, The New York Festival of International Literature.
Additional co-sponsors are the Instituto Cervantes, the Hungarian Cultural Center and the Consulate General of Spain.
About Adam Michnik
Adam Michnik was born in Warsaw, Poland, on October 17, 1946. Historian, writer, lecturer, and former dissident, he has been the editor in chief of Gazeta Wyborcza, the first independent Polish daily newspaper, since its inception in 1989.
About Baltasar Garzón
Baltasar Garzón was born in Villa de Torres, Spain, in 1955. Garzón sits on Spain's highest criminal court, the Audiencia Nacional. He has indicted Pinochet and Osama bin Laden and recently brought charges against those allegedly involved in 9/11.
About Gioconda Belli
Gioconda Belli was born in Managua, Nicaragua, in 1948. She won the Casa de las Americas Prize in 1978 for Line of Fire and was a finalist for Los Angeles Times Book Prize in 2003 for The Country Under My Skin. Her novel The Scroll of Seduction will be published in 2006.
About G. M. Tamás
G. M. Tamás was born in Romania in 1948 and forced into exile in 1978, when he began to teach at the University of Budapest and was published only abroad. Recently, he was granted the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Soros Foundation in Hungary.
About Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair, a book critic for The Atlantic, and teaches at the New School. The author of more than a dozen books, his most recent publications are Thomas Jefferson: Author of America (Eminent Lives) and Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays.