On Aging: Revolt and Resignation

by Jean Améry

Book Overview

..". if Am ry's pessimism disparages life, his humanism reaffirms it. By trying to make sense of our existence, Am ry reminds us of why human life is precious." --Alan Wolfe, The New Republic "The pessimistic tone of this book is provocative and should interest students and faculty involved with issues of aging." --Choice "The writing challenges and searches, trying to cut beneath conventional language and expectations, seeking to delineate qualities...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0253306752
• ISBN13: 9780253306753
• Release Date: September 1994
• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Length: 162 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.8" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

One of the great men of the 20th century

Amery was not French. He was an Austrian Jew who immigrated to Belgium and joined the resistance in the late 1930s. He was captured in 1943 and tortured in Auschwitz, but survived to make the experience the subject of his greatest work, published in English as "At the Mind's Limits." After the war he moved permanently to Belgium and discarded his German name (Hans Mayer), replacing it with the French-sounding anagram under which his subsequent works were published. Like so many survivors of Nazi torture, he ended his own life. The essays in this collection are not profound in the same way as his Auschwitz book, but they describe the workings of a brilliant mind confronting a universal experience. They are worthy of our highest respect.