As an incisive and provocative critic of literature, language, and culture, George Steiner has acquired an international reputation and a devoted following. "He scatters bright ideas everywhere," writes The New York Times Book Review, "and they are sure to be picked up." This volume presents a rich sampling of Steiner's ideas, including selections from his seminal books The Death of Tragedy, After Babel, Tolstoy or Dostoevsky, and Language and Science. Aside from pointing to work that lies ahead, this anthology offers a rich retrospective of the intellectual ground Steiner has already...

Imagine, thirty years after the end of World War II, Israeli Nazi-hunters, some of whom lost relatives in the gas chambers of Nazi Germany, find a silent old man deep in the Amazon jungle. He is Adolph Hitler. The narrative that follows is a profound and disturbing exploration of the nature of guilt, vengeance, language, and the power of evil-each undiminished over time. George Steiner's stunning novel, now with a new afterword, will continue to provoke our thinking about Nazi Germany's unforgettable past.
"Two readings have convinced me that this is a fiction of extraordinary power and...

According to Greek legend, Antigone, the daughter of Oedipus, secretly buried her brother in defiance of the order of Creon, king of Thebes. Sentenced to death by Creon, she forestalled him by committing suicide. The theme of the conflict between Antigone and Creon--between the state and the individual, between man and woman, between young and old--has captured the Western imagination for more than 2000 years. George Steiner here examines the far-reaching legacy of this great classical myth. He considers its treatment in Western art, literature, and thought--in drama, poetry, prose,...

"This book is important--and portentous--for if it is true that tragedy is dead, we face a vital cultural loss. . . . The book is bound to start controversy. . . . The very passion and insight with which he writes about the tragedies that have moved him prove that the vision still lives and that words can still enlighten and reveal."--R.B. Sewall, New York Times Book Review

"A remarkable achievement. . . . The knowledge is marshalled here with the skill and authority of a great general, and from it a large strategic argument emerges with clarity and force. . . . A brilliantly...

The decline of formal religious systems has left a moral and emotional emptiness in Western culture. George Steiner, internationally renowned thinker and scholar, pursues this and examines the alternative "mythologies" of Marxism, Freudian psychology, Levi-Straussian anthropology, and fads of irrationality."

George Steiner is one of the preeminent essayists and literary thinkers of our era. In this remarkable book he concerns himself with language and the relation of language to literature and to religion. Written during a period when the art of reading and the status of a text have been threatened by literary movements that question their validity and by computer technology, Steiner's essays affirm the primacy of reading in the classical sense.
Steiner covers a wide range of subjects, from the Hebrew Bible, Homer, and Shakespeare to Kafka, Kierkegaard, Simone Weil, Husserl, and Freud. The...

Einen brillanten Essay, eine Variation in zehn Stzen ber Glanz und Elend des Denkens legt George Steiner hier vor. Was geschieht in unserem Geist, wenn wir zu grbeln beginnen? Ist es mglich,gradlinigzu denken? Und ist es ein Grund zur Verzweiflung, da man selbst in Momenten grter Intimitt die Gedanken des Geliebten nicht erfassen kann?