Samiksha Jaiswal (Editor)

Pietà (book)

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Cover artist
  
Jean Wilcox

Language
  
Swedish

Author
  
George Klein

Genre
  
Essay

4.5/5
Goodreads

Country
  
Sweden

Originally published
  
1989

Page count
  
297 (MIT Press paperback)

Published in english
  
1992

Pietà (book) t3gstaticcomimagesqtbnANd9GcQjmHeMFDIzN4Boq

Translator
  
Theodore and Ingrid Friedmann (English translators)

Subject
  
Philosophy, poetry, biography

Publisher
  
Albert Bonniers Förlag AB, Stockholm

Preceded by
  
The atheist and the holy city

Similar
  
Arrows in the Dark, Jews for sale?, Perfidy, Auschwitz Protocols, The Politics of Genocide

Pietà is a collection of essays by the Hungarian-Swedish biologist, George Klein, first published in Sweden in 1989. It includes nine essays by Klein, several touching broadly on the theme of whether life is worth living. The introduction opens with a quote from Albert Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus (1942): "There is but one truly philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy."

After the introduction, the first essay, "Pista," is about the suicide of a cousin and childhood friend in Hungary. It is followed by essays on the poet Attila Jozsef; the power of poetry and literature, with discussions on Rainer Maria Rilke, Friedrich Nietzsche, Thomas Mann, and Edgar Allan Poe; the role of German scientists during the Holocaust; an interview with Rudolf Vrba (the Auschwitz escapee); essays on AIDS and biological individuality; and reflections on Klein's own experience of the Holocaust in Budapest.

References

Pietà (book) Wikipedia