Charles Reeve (Lisbon, 1945) An electrician by profession and a former officer in the Portuguese Navy, he deserted the Army in 1967 after discovering that he had been deceived as soon as he crossed the door of the Naval School and because of his opposition to the colonial war. Exiled in Paris, he was part of the editorial board of Cadernos de circumstância and lived through May 1968 as a member of the anti-authoritarian currents. A prolific essayist, he has written about China, the United States and Portugal. He has published Le Tigre de papier (Éditions Spartacus, 1972), China blues: voyage au pays de l'harmonie précaire (with Hsi Hsuan-wou, Verticals/Gallimard, 2008), and Memory and Fire. Portugal, the hidden face of Euroland (Pumpkin Seeds, 2012). The pseudonym with which Jorge Valadas —his real name— has signed this book and others is a tribute to the homonymous revolutionary syndicalist, sentenced in 1916 to ten years of exile and forced labor in Sydney, for sabotaging the “war effort” .