One of the foremost thinkers of his generation, Furio Jesi began to publish scholarly essays in academic journals at the age of fifteen. By the time of his early death in 1980, he had accumulated a body of work that astonishes with its abundance and...

In Japan there is a legend that anyone who folds one thousand paper cranes will have their wishes realized. But folding cranes, and the meditative, solemn care that it involves, has come to mean more than just an exercise in wish making. Origami cran...

"In 1968-1969 I wanted to die, that is to say, stop living, being killed, but it was blocked on all sides", wrote Helene Cixous, esteemed French feminist, playwright, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist. Instead of suicide, she began to dream...

For much of her career, Elfriede Jelinek has been maligned in the press for both her unrelenting critique of Austrian complicity in the Holocaust and her provocative deconstructions of pornography. Despite this, her central role in shaping contempora...

Despite being widely acknowledged as one of the most important German dramatists since Bertolt Brecht, Heiner Muller (1929-1995) still remains relatively unknown in the English-speaking world. This collection of plays aims to change that, presenting...

From the 1920s through the 1950s, Bertolt Brecht wrote a number of short, fictionalized comments on contemporary life, politics, and thought. Through the dramatic events of the first half of the twentieth century, Brecht's Mr. Keuner offered up aphor...

Baruch Spinoza (1632-1977) is considered one of the great rationalist thinkers of the seventeenth century. His magnum opus, "Ethics", in which he criticized the dualism of Descartes, solidified his reputation and greatly influenced the Enlightenment...

"Tarkovsky for me is the greatest", wrote Ingmar Bergman. Andrey Tarkovsky only made seven films, but all are celebrated for its striking visual images, quietly patient dramatic structures, and visionary symbolism. "Time within Time" is both a diary...

Described as an answer to or at least an echo of Samuel Beckett's "Krapp's Last Tape?", "Till Day You Do Part Or A Question of Light", by esteemed Austrian playwright and novelist Peter Handke, is a monologue delivered by the "she" in Beckett's play....

Bolivia's foremost social and political theorist, Rene Zavaleta Mercado held diplomatic and ministerial posts with the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement in the 1950s and '60s, before eventually aligning with the Marxist left, where he developed the...