Book launch Matthew Longo, The Picnic
30 november 2023Come to Athenaeum Boekhandel Spui, on Thursday 30 November Matthew Longo and Norton & Co celebrate the publication of Longo's new book The Picnic: An escsape to freedom and the collapse of the iron curtain. You are welcome at Athenaeum Spui from 19.30, the program will start at 19.45.
De voertaal voor dit evenement is Engels.
About The Picnic
In August 1989, a group of Hungarian activists organized a picnic on the border of Hungary and Austria. But this was not an ordinary picnic-it was located on the dangerous militarized frontier known as the Iron Curtain. Tacit permission from the highest state authorities could be revoked at any moment.On wisps of rumor, thousands of East German "vacationers" packed Hungarian campgrounds, awaiting an opportunity, fearing prison, surveilled by lurking Stasi agents. The Pan-European Picnic set the stage for the greatest border breach in Cold War history: hundreds crossed from the Communist East to the longed-for freedom of the West. The fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Soviet Union-the so-called end of history-all would flow from those dramatic hours.Drawing on exclusive interviews, Matthew Longo gives an invaluable account of historical change, and the disillusionment that followed, as emotionally powerful as it is revealing.
About Matthew Longo
Matthew Longo is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Leiden University, where he teaches political theory. His work focuses on problems of borders and migration, with a thematic interest in questions of sovereignty, authority and freedom. Longo's first book, The politics of Borders, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2018.
