Bøker av Manuel Tiago

Until Tomorrow, Comrades is an immersive epic novel, written in the 1950s, as Manuel Tiago, (Álvaro Cunhal), languished in a fascist high-security prison. He escaped on January 3, 1960, with this precious manuscript. The story closely mirrors actual events and movements that the Portuguese Communist Party promulgated in the early 1940s. Regional and general strikes with thousands of workers in fields and factories paralyzed the economy, protesting hunger and unlivable wages. This bold strategy inevitably exposed numerous comrades, who suffered imprisonment, poor health and death, a risk their leaders naturally assumed. How else could the Portuguese people assert their demands and be heard?These movements firmly established the PCP in the popular mind as the most dedicated force opposing the regime. Though not strictly autobiographical, the novel reflects Cunhal's lived experience as a party leader. Critics consider it his masterpiece, comparable to Émile Zola's Germinal. This seminal work firmly establishes the entire cultural understanding of the fascist period. It has gone through at least 12 printings and was made into a six-episode miniseries in 2013. It is available now in English for the first time.Enter the pages of this novel and meet the dedicated activists for Portuguese democracy, with all their challenges and sacrifices, but also their quirks, failings and mistakes. It offers the reader a granular course on how to fight fascism whose lessons transcend Portugal and its time, serving not as a blueprint but as a beacon to those who struggle everywhere.

In all the artistic and historical output concerning the Spanish Civil War, mention is scarcely found of the response to it from neighboring Portugal, it's our hope that the release of this novel in English will help fill some of that gap.

This book, Slackers, is a collection of short stories, part of International Publisher's ongoing Manuel Tiago series The title story, "The Slackers," deals humorously with a mixed bag of misfits who are forced to report to a military correctional camp to complete their obligatory service. As in several of his other works of fiction, Tiago, (Álvaro Cunhal), based his tale on his own life. For a time, in late 1939 and early 1940, Cunhal was forced to complete his military service in a Disciplinary Company. "Hand in Hand" is a teenage love story set against the background of the post-1974 public flowering of the Communist Party as a significant partner in the democratic reconstruction of the country. In this story the author once again calls upon his own memories, having served as a very young man as leader of the Federation of Portuguese Communist Youth. "Parallel Stories" is the centerpiece of the collection, the longest and most developed story in this volume, essentially a novella. Set in contemporary democratic times, we see a small regional Communist Party organization struggling with its past as primarily a party of the working class at a time when the working class itself was undergoing profound changes. The final story, "Lives," reads like the treatment of an epic-long family saga, or even asprawling multi-season TV miniseries. Its timeframe is deliberately obscure, although to be sure, there is an automobile that plays a small part toward the end. Otherwise, we seem tohover anywhere between the late 19th century all the way up through the mid-20th.