This collection of eleven essays originally appeared in France thirty years ago and created a literary whirlwind on the Left Bank. Cioran writes incisively about Western civilizations, the writer, the novel, mystics, apostles, and philosophers.<br /><br />The Temptation to Exist first introduced this brilliant European thinker twenty years ago to American readers, in a superb translation by Richard Howard. This literary mystique around Cioran continues to grow, and <em>The Temptation to Exist</em> has become an underground classic. In this work Cioran writes about Western civilizations, the writer, the novel, about mystics, apostles, philosophers. For those to whom the very word <em>philosophy</em> brings visions of arduous reading, be assured: Cioran is crystal-clear, his style quotable and aphoristic.<p>“A sort of final philosopher of the Western world. His statements have the compression of poetry and the audacity of cosmic clowning”—<em>The Washington Post</em></p>