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THE EYEWITNESS REPORT
By: Albert Maltz
An unpublished work by Albert Maltz
Calder Publications
November 2025
On Sale: October 21, 2025
208 pages
ISBN: 0714550965
EAN: 9780714550961
Hardcover
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Fiction Literary | Historical
The scene opens in Moscow in August 1968. Forty-two-year-old Daniil Petrovich Barkov is a prizewinning writer whose life is at a crossroads. His wife is slowly dying in a hospital bed, and his faith in his country is shaken by the anti-democratic invasion of Czechoslovakia by Soviet troops. On a Sunday afternoon in Red Square, Barkov witnesses a peaceful demonstration for human rights. Eight men and women, including a mother and her baby, sit silently on the pavement near Lenin's tomb and unfurl their banners. Within moments, police whistles are heard, and KGB agents arrest them with shocking brutality. Barkov is moved by the bravery of the protesters, but resists the impulse to join them. The guilt-ridden author vows to write an eyewitness report, a burning polemic against rule by aggression, which will show his growth as an artist. At once an indictment of oppression and an exploration of the role and responsibility of the individual in the face of tragic historical events – themes that preoccupied Maltz throughout his life and artistic career – The Eyewitness Report, left unpublished by its author at his death and presented here for the first time, will cement Maltz's reputation as one of the finest storytellers and most perceptive thinkers of the last century.
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