`[Jean Amery was] one of the few authentic voices on the Holocaust... based on the most "ponderous insights into the irreparable condition of the victims, and that it is from such insights alone that the true nature of the terror visited on them can be extrapolated with some precision."' W. G. Sebald<BR><BR>`one reads [Jean Amery] with almost physical pain.' Primo Levi<BR><BR>`Speaking out on behalf of the hitherto silent victims, Amery was one of the first - along with his fellow Auschwitz inmate Primo Levi - to universalize his ordeal...As this biography demonstrates, his witness has never been more necessary than today.' Daniel Johnson, TLS<BR><BR>`This is a quintessential book on a quintessential writer and intellectual whose works elucidate the human condition in the face of unspeakable suffering, for which he found words that haunt and humble us.' Rudiger Gorner, Professor of German Literature, Queen Mary, University of London<BR><BR>Who was Jean Amery? Victim or survivor? Agnostic or Jew? Austrian or exile? Philosopher or novelist? Jean Amery is not easy to classify but what this biography (the first available in English) demonstrates is that he is more - far more - than some enigmatic cult figure: he is one of the most influential of Holocaust survivors and one of the most provocative writers and thinkers of the twentieth century.<BR><BR>Jean Amery - born Hans Maier in Austria in 1912 - is perhaps best known for his seminal work, At the Mind's Limits, one of the central texts on what Amery himself described as `the subjective state of the victim.' But as Irene Heidelberger-Leonard's book reveals, Amery was not just a `professional concentration camper', as he sometimes dubbed himself in a mixture of mockery and resignation.<BR><BR>Drawing on a wide range of previously unpublished documents, Heidelberger-Leonard illuminates the turbulent life of this complex figure, from his modest origins in pre-war Austria; his flight from his homeland to join the Austrian Resistance in Belgium; his imprisonment in Auschwitz and his liberation in Belsen; his return to Brussels in 1945 to his eventual suicide in Salzburg in 1978. This definitive biography examines how Amery grappled with what it meant to be both a victim and survivor of the concentration camps and what his experiences there reveal about the tension between human dignity and the reality of horror. Focusing chiefly on Amery's literary works, one of the book's great strengths lies in exploring how every aspect of Amery's life and thought is inextricably connected with his writings.<BR><BR>This biography brilliantly demonstrates the importance of Amery in his own time and shows how his relevance extends far beyond.