The renowned philosopher examines Western civilization with "the compression of poetry and the audacity of cosmic clowning" -introduction by Susan Sontag ( The Washington Post ).
Originally published in France in 1956, this collection of eleven essays created a literary whirlwind on the Left Bank. Aphoristic, iconoclastic, and deeply pessimistic, Cioran writes incisively about Western civilization: the writer, the novel, mystics, apostles, and philosophers.
This superb translation by Richard Howard introduced Cioran to American readers, and has since become an underground classic all its own. This edition includes an introduction by Susan Sontag and a foreword by Eugene Thacker, author of In the Dust of This Planet .
"A brilliant exponent of a rare genre, the philosophical essay." - The New York Times Book Review
