Petre Tutea: Between Sacrifice and Suicide

Petre Tutea (1902-91) was perhaps the last great political and theological thinker of twentieth-century Eastern Europe. A Christian living in Communist Romania, he spent thirteen years as a prisoner of conscience and twenty-eight years under house arrest at the hands of the Securitate. This book is the first to present Tutea's work to the English-speaking world. It explores his response to the horrors of torture and 're-education' and reveals the experience of a whole generation detained in the political prisons. Tutea's understanding of human needs and how they can be fulfilled even amidst extreme adversity has established his authority as a spiritual teacher. Following the fall of the Ceausescus, his significance has been recognised both for ecumenical Christian thinking and for wider issues of truth and reconciliation in the contemporary world.