“Queer Encounters offers many . . . counterintuitive surprises. Sokolová finds that the socialist Czechoslovak state did not target homosexuals for persecution. In fact, the offices of sexologists became in the 1970s places for gay, trans, and lesbian men and women to hang out. Most surprisingly, Sokolová argues that by refusing to diagnose and name ‘homosexuality’ in Czechoslovak society, the state gave individuals the freedom to choose their own sexual identities and genders and to live them out in fascinating ways. Based on oral history and archival research, Queer Encounters will change the way we view socialist culture.”

Kate Brown, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

“Sokolová’s work is an excellent study in the contradictions of state socialism. Her oral history of non-heterosexual people and Czech sexologists showcases how policy pressure toward homogeneity and suppression of individuality and otherness was countered by expert discourse and practice.”

Libora Oates-Indruchová, University of Graz

"This richly-textured study of how people who understood they were not heterosexual interacted with the state in communist Czechoslovakia encourages its readers to think differently about the formation of queer subjectivities under state socialism, the meanings of marriage and family in non-heterosexual lives, and the nature of communist state power itself."

H-Soz-Kult