Here in one volume, are the essential writings in the 34 notebook's Cioran left behind at his death, not a journal but a sort of exercise manual, in which he tries out his formulations, perfects the expression of his obsessions and whims. The "Notebooks" are rich in anecdotes, accounts of meetings, portraits of friends and enemies, descriptions of excursions and sleepless nights. Here are the lists, day after day, of failures, sufferings, anxieties, terrors, rages, and humiliations, curiously at odds with the daytime Cioran, so mocking and tonic, so comical and various. These brief entries constitute a backstage glimpse of a tormented mind, wise in its very torments, solitary in its wisdom.