" . . . a moving, deep series of insights into the suicide's world . . . " —Kirkus Reviews
Jean Améry (Auschwitz survivor and author of At the Mind's Limits) thought of On Suicide as a continuation of the kind of reflections on mortality he had laid down in On Aging. But here he probes further and more deeply into the meaning of death and into the human capacity for suicide or voluntary death.
Jean Améry (1921-1978) was born in Vienna and in 1938 emigrated to Belgium, where he joined the Resistance Movement. He was caught by the Nazis in 1943, tortured by the SS, and survived the next two years in the concentration camps. He was author of seven volumes of essays and two novels. He committed suicide in 1978.
John D. Barlow is Dean Emeritus of the School of Liberal Arts and Professor Emeritus of English and German at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis. He is author of German Expressionist Film and several translations, including Jean Améry's On Aging.
Translator's Preface
Translator's Introduction
Preface
I. Before the Leap
II. How Natural is Death?
III. To Lay Hands on Oneself
IV. Belonging to Oneself
V. The Road to the Open
Notes