In this collection of essays and epigrams, E.M. Cioran gives us portraits and evaluations?which he calls "admirations"?of Samuel Beckett, Jorge Luis Borges, F. Scott Fitzgerald, the poet Paul Valery, and Mircea Eliade, among others. In alternating sections of aphorisms?his "anathemas"?he delivers insights on such topics as solitude, flattery, vanity, friendship, insomnia, music, mortality, God, and the lure of disillusion.

E. M. Cioran left his native land of Romania for Paris in the late 1930s, where he lived and wrote until his death in 1995. His many books include Anathemas and Admirations, A Short History of Decay, and The Trouble with Being Born.Richard Howard is the author of eleven books of poetry, including Untitled Subjects, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1970. He is the translator for more than 150 works from the French language. He received the American Book Award for his translation of Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal.Eugene Thacker is the author of several books, including After Life and Horror of Philosophy. He teaches at The New School in New York.