This book (Afrontamento, 2025) brings together 118 texts, originally scattered across various media, written and made public between 2000 and 2025, selected by the author from among thousands of others produced during the same period. They are mainly in the form of chronicles, a literary genre that, due to its conciseness and formal freedom, possesses the capacity to interact, allowing it to dialogue with its surroundings and functioning as a place of observation, an instrument of criticism, and a tool for public intervention. All have a strong link with essayistic reflection, with the objective observation of reality and with civic participation, within a framework of thought articulated with the plural dimension of the political and cultural left. They also aim to unite the work of reason with a prospective and uncertain dimension, far from dogmatism and sectarianism.

About the author

Rui Bebiano is a historian, professor at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra and researcher at the Centre for Social Studies. He was also director of the 25 de Abril Documentation Centre. He is the author of books, scientific articles and papers on literary criticism and opinion, and is a regular contributor to the press. He is currently working on political and cultural movements from the 1950s to the present day, in the fields of the history of ideas and intellectuals, representations of utopia, processes of exclusion and silencing, and the relationship between history and memory. He has participated in the dissemination of cyberculture in Portugal and is constantly involved in public advocacy for progressive ideals, freedom and democracy. His previous book, Labirinto de Outubro. Cem Anos de Revolução e Dissidência, addresses the prolonged impact of the 1917 Revolution on the evolution of socialism.