In April 1945, Jean Améry was liberated from the Bergen Belsen concentration camp. A Jewish and political prisoner, he had been brutally tortured by the Nazis, and had also survived both Auschwitz and other infamous camps. His experiences during the Holocaust were made famous by his book At the Mind's Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor of Auschwitz and Its Realities.\nEssays on Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism, and the Left features a collection of essays by Améry translated into English for the first time. Although written between 1966 and 1978, Améry's insights remain fresh and contemporary, and showcase the power of his thought.\nOriginally written when leftwing antisemitism was first on the rise, Améry's searing prose interrogates the relationship between anti-Zionism and antisemitism and challenges the international left to confront its failure to think critically and reflectively.

Essays on Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism, and the Left (Studies in Antisemitism)

History

Améry, Jean

World

Indiana University Press

Review\nIf there's a cure for today's woke antisemitism, this is it. Camouflaged as anti-Zionism, the world's oldest hatred runs amok on the left in new forms after World War II (which stigmatized old-fashioned, rightwing Jew-hatred for a time), as Améry saw ahead of the rest. Anti-Zionism is antisemitism, he recognized unflinchingly. In sum, there is no discussion worth having of campus antisemitism, the movement to boycott Israel, the upsurge in attacks on Jews around the world or Israeli-diaspora relations that ignores this prescient and piercing, achingly lucid volume -- Gabriel Noah Brahm, Northern Michigan University\nIn April 1945, Jean Améry was liberated from the Bergen Belsen concentration camp. A Jewish and political prisoner, he had been brutally tortured by the Nazis, and had also survived both Auschwitz and other infamous camps. His experiences during the Holocaust were made famous by his book At the Mind's Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor of Auschwitz and Its Realities. 
Essays on Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism, and the Left features a collection of essays by Améry translated into English for the first time. Although written between 1966 and 1978, Améry's insights remain fresh and contemporary, and showcase the power of his thought. 
Originally written when leftwing antisemitism was first on the rise, Améry's searing prose interrogates the relationship between anti-Zionism and antisemitism and challenges the international left to confront its failure to think critically and reflectively.

At the Mind's Limits is the story of one man's struggle to understand the reality of horror. In five autobiographical essays, Jean Amery describes his survival -- mental, moral, and physical -- through the enormity of the Holocaust. Above all, this masterful record of introspection tells of a young Viennese intellectual's fervent vision of human nature and the betrayal of that vision. Amery depicts the futile attempts of the intellect to cope with the overwhelming realities of Auschwitz. His torture is perceived as a reduction of self to the purely physical, with an accompanying loss of faith in the world. He struggles to come to terms with exile from his homeland as well as his feelings upon returning to the country of his persecutors. Finally, Amery, once the totally peripheral Jew, explains how complete acceptance of his Jewish identity, as compelled by his experiences in Auschwitz, is the only way in which he can regain human dignity.

At the Mind's Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and Its Realities (German Edition)

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

"These are pages that one reads with almost physical pain...all the way to its stoic conclusion." ―Primo Levi
"The testimony of a profoundly serious man.... In its every turn and crease, it bears the marks of the true." ―Irving Howe, New Republic
"This remarkable memoir...is the autobiography of an extraordinarily acute conscience. With the ear of a poet and the eye of a novelist, Amery vividly communicates the wonder of a philosopher―a wonder here aroused by the ‘dark riddle’ of the Nazi regime and its systematic sadism." ―Jim Miller, Newsweek
"Whoever has succumbed to torture can no longer feel at home in the world. The shame of destruction cannot be erased. Trust in the world, which already collapsed in part at the first blow, but in the end, under torture, fully, will not be regained. That one’s fellow man was experienced as the antiman remains in the tortured person as accumulated horror. It blocks the view into a world in which the principle of hope rules. One who was martyred is a defenseless prisoner of fear. It is fear that henceforth reigns over him." ―Jean Amery
At the Mind’s Limits is the story of one man’s incredible struggle to understand the reality of horror. In five autobiographical essays, Amery describes his survival―mental, moral, and physical―through the enormity of the Holocaust. Above all, this masterful record of introspection tells of a young Viennese intellectual’s fervent vision of human nature and the betrayal of that vision.

At the Mind's Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and its Realities

"... if Améry’s pessimism disparages life, his humanism reaffirms it. By trying to make sense of our existence, Améry reminds us of why human life is precious." —Alan Wolfe, The New Republic
"The pessimistic tone of this book is provocative and should interest students and faculty involved with issues of aging." —Choice
"The writing challenges and searches, trying to cut beneath conventional language and expectations, seeking to delineate qualities of lived experience in their most essential dimensions." —Contemporary Gerontology
Five profoundly moving and courageously honest essays about the process of aging by the famous Belgian author of At the Mind’s Limits. Each essay covers a set of issues about growing old, from the way aging makes the old progressively see time as the essence of their existence to the argument that everyone compromises with death in old age (the time in life when we feel the death that is in us).

On Aging: Revolt and Resignation

Parenting & Relationships

At the Mind's Limits is the story of one man's struggle to understand the reality of horror. In five autobiographical essays, Jean Amery describes his survival -- mental, moral, and physical -- through the enormity of the Holocaust. Above all, this masterful record of introspection tells of a young Viennese intellectual's fervent vision of human nature and the betrayal of that vision. Amery depicts the futile attempts of the intellect to cope with the overwhelming realities of Auschwitz. His torture is perceived as a reduction of self to the purely physical, with an accompanying loss of faith in the world. He struggles to come to terms with exile from his homeland as well as his feelings upon returning to the country of his persecutors. Finally, Amery, once the totally peripheral Jew, explains how complete acceptance of his Jewish identity, as compelled by his experiences in Auschwitz, is the only way in which he can regain human dignity.

At The Mind's Limits

Military

Schocken

Essays discuss Jewish identity and the implications of the Holocaust

AT THE MIND'S LIMITS (Witnesses to War)

Fans of Flaubert's Madame Bovary will want to read this reimagination of one of literature's most famous failures, Charles Bovary. Part fiction, part philosophy, Charles Bovary, Country Doctor is also a book about love. Charles Bovary, Country Doctor is one of the most unusual projects in twentieth-century literature: a novel-essay devoted to salvaging poor bungler Charles Bovary, the pathetic, laughable, cuckolded husband of Madame Bovary and the heartless creation of Gustave Flaubert. As a once-promising novelist who was tortured by the Nazis and survived a year in Auschwitz, author Jean Améry had a particular sympathy for the lived experience of vulnerability, affliction, and suffering, and in this book—available in English for the first time—he asserts the moral claims of Dr. Bovary. What results is a moving paean to the humanity of Charles Bovary and to the supreme value of love.

Charles Bovary, Country Doctor: Portrait of a Simple Man (New York Review Books Classics)

Literature & Fiction

United States

NYRB Classics

This is the story of film told passionately, from the perspective of the filmmakers themselves. Interweaving personalities, technological advances and changes in production with engaging descriptions of groundbreaking scenes in the films themselves, Mark Cousins captures the shifting trends of movie history without recourse

At the Mind's Limits : Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and Its Realities

Granta Books

Lefeu ou la démolition

Essays & Correspondence

Actes-sud

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Améry, Jean. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Améry, Jean

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Améry, Jean. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Essays on Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism, and the Left (Studies in Antisemitism)

Essays on Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism, and the Left (Studies in Antisemitism)

At the Mind's Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and Its Realities (German Edition)

At the Mind's Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and its Realities

On Aging: Revolt and Resignation

At The Mind's Limits

AT THE MIND'S LIMITS (Witnesses to War)

Charles Bovary, Country Doctor: Portrait of a Simple Man (New York Review Books Classics)

At the Mind's Limits : Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and Its Realities

Lefeu ou la démolition