"Cioran is one of the most delicate minds of real power writing today," notes Susan Sontag in her introduction to this work. "Nuance, irony, and refinement are the essence of his thinking. Like Beckett, Cioran is concerned with the absolute integrity of thought. For him the mind is a voyeur. But not of the world. Of itself." The Temptation to Exist first introduced this brilliant European thinker to American readers in a superb translation by Richard Howard. The literary mystique around Cioran continued to grow, and The Temptation to Exist became an underground classic.

In this work, Cioran writes about Western civilizations, the writer, the novel, about mystics, apostles, philosophers. For those to whom the very word philosophy brings visions of arduous reading, be assured: Cioran is crystal clear, his style quotable and aphoristic. Born in Romania in 1911, E. M. Cioran moved to Paris when he was twenty-six and lived there until his death in 1995. A maverick and iconoclast, he has been called "the last worthy disciple of Nietzsche" as well as a brilliant aphorist and stylist. His other books include Anathemas and Admirations, Drawn and Quartered, A Short History of Decay, and The Trouble with Being Born, all available in paperback from Arcade. Book jacket.