Synopses & Reviews
His brief pamphlet
Indignez-vous! (
Cry Out!) is an international bestseller, calling for a return to the values of his native France’s “greatest generation,” the resistance fighters of World War II. It has inspired citizens participating in the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street uprisings. Now Stéphane Hessel, one of France’s preeminent thinkers and activists, is back. With extraordinary insight, the ninety-four-year-old Hessel gives his intellectual autobiography. His thinking is nourished by the exchange he has maintained for years with his close friends, as well as prominent political and literary figures: Edgar Morin, Jean-Paul Dollé, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Régis Debray, Peter Sloterdijk, Laure Adler, Michel Rocard, and Jean-Claude Carrière.
This book is accessible and profound—it is for all those who seek, despite the contradictions and violence of our contemporary lives, to “regain our dignity as men and women while governed by a frenzy of selfish and irresponsible people.” This book is, for Stéphane Hessel, a way to encourage us to reflect on the past in order to take charge of our future destiny. At once a handbook for the revolutionary, a treatise on human rights, and an inside look at the relationships, thoughts, and recollections of one of the most important figures in France today, this is a not-to-be-missed book for 2012.
Review
"Stéphane Hessel has a fair claim to being the world’s most interesting man." Foreign Policy
Review
"At 94 years of age, Stephane Hessel has already seen and done more than most people can even imagine. He witnessed the rise of fascism in Europe, fought the Nazis in the French Resistance; was interned in German death camps, designated for hanging, escaped and participated in the liberation of Paris; and worked as a diplomat, author and human-rights activist." Kirkus Review
Review
"He has lived a life that rivals the best fiction. He could fade into contented retreat. Instead, he just wants to make you angry. Yes, you." Time Magazine
Review
"As a hero of the French Resistance, Stéphane Hessel was in exile with Charles de Gaulle in London, imprisoned in concentration camps, waterboarded in Nazi torture sessions and saved from hanging by swapping identities with an inmate who had died of typhus." Newsweek Magazine
Review
"Unfocused, and not for the fainthearted, but a clarion call for the like-minded that will perhaps attract the curious as well." Top 100 Global Thinkers
Synopsis
The astonishing life of the writer named by the New York Times “one of the last living heroes of the darkest era of the twentieth century.”
Synopsis
His brief pamphlet Indignez-vous (Cry Out ) is an international bestseller, calling for a return to the values of his native France s greatest generation, the resistance fighters of World War II. It has inspired citizens participating in the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street uprisings. Now Stephane Hessel, one of France s preeminent thinkers and activists, is back. With extraordinary insight, the ninety-four-year-old Hessel gives his intellectual autobiography. His thinking is nourished by the exchange he has maintained for years with his close friends, as well as prominent political and literary figures: Edgar Morin, Jean-Paul Dolle, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Regis Debray, Peter Sloterdijk, Laure Adler, Michel Rocard, and Jean-Claude Carriere.
This book is accessible and profound it is for all those who seek, despite the contradictions and violence of our contemporary lives, to regain our dignity as men and women while governed by a frenzy of selfish and irresponsible people. This book is, for Stephane Hessel, a way to encourage us to reflect on the past in order to take charge of our future destiny. At once a handbook for the revolutionary, a treatise on human rights, and an inside look at the relationships, thoughts, and recollections of one of the most important figures in France today, this is a not-to-be-missed book for 2012.
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About the Author
Stéphane Hessel was born in 1917 in Berlin and moved to France in 1925, and has traveled the world during his diplomatic career. A member of the french resistance during World War II, a concentration camp survivor, and editor of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Still very active in several advocacy groups, he has received numerous awards and was awarded the Légion d'Honneur in 2006. He lives in France, where he is also a writer and poet. His book Indignez-vous! has sold millions of copies worldwide.E. C. Belli is a writer and translator. A Swiss native, she studied literary translation at Columbia University, where she was the recipient of a 2010 Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans. She is the author of Plein Jeu and an editor at Argos Books.