RaveWashington PostIn Give Me Liberty: The True Story of Oswaldo Payá and his Daring Quest for a Free Cuba, David E. Hoffman delivers a moving, deeply researched and long-overdue biography of the man who launched the Varela Project, a citizen initiative that challenged Fidel Castro’s rule by petitioning for democracy...The initiative was prompted by what Payá called a \'crack in the wall\' of tyranny...Hoffman details the ways in which Payá used the initiative to demand \'free speech, a free press, freedom of association, freedom of belief, private enterprise, free elections, and freedom for political prisoners\'...Hoffman skillfully leads us through Payá’s narrative, as if \'Give Me Liberty\' were a historical thriller...The tragedy at the center, of course, is that it’s a true story, not only of one man’s \'journey into the whirlwind of dictatorship\' but also of a country and its suffocating struggle for freedom...As Hoffman observes, \'an important legacy of Oswaldo’s quest was that gradually, painstakingly, despite all the obstacles and hardships, Cubans began to lose their fear and raise their voice against despotism.\'
