A Short History of Decay (Penguin Translated Texts) [Paperback]

To miss reading this book would be a deprivation (Los Angeles Times )

This [series] is a wonderful idea ... They are absurdist parables, by turns hilarious, unsettling and enigmatic. (Nicholas Lezard Guardian )

[The series] sheds remarkable light on the literature, culture and politics of the region...anyone coming fresh to the field will be captivated by the richness, variety, humour and pathos of a classic literature that, through a shared historical experience, transcends national and linguistic boundaries. (Cj Schüler Independent on Sunday )

I urge you to go and read them. (Adam Thirlwell New Statesman )

This new series of Central European Classics is important well beyond simply providing 'good reads'. (Stephen Vizinczey Daily Telegraph )

A Short History of Decay (1949) is E. M. Cioran's nihilistic and witty collection of aphoristic essays concerning the nature of civilization in mid-twentieth-century Europe. Touching upon Man's need to worship, the feebleness of God, the downfall of the Ancient Greeks and the melancholy baseness of all existence, Cioran's pieces are pessimistic in the extreme, but also display a beautiful certainty that renders them delicate, vivid, and memorable. Illuminating and brutally honest, A Short History of Decay dissects Man's decadence in a remarkable series of moving and beautiful pieces.

E. M. Cioran (1911-1995) was one of Central Europe's most remarkable philosophers, author of what William Gass called romances on 'alienation, absurdity, boredom, futility, decay, the tyranny of history, the vulgarities of change, awareness as agony, reason as disease'. A Romanian, he lived much of his life in Paris and many of his major works were written in French, including A Short History of Decay, The Trouble with Being Born and Drawn and Quartered.