War, Evil, and the End of History - Softcover

Levy, Bernard Henri; Charlotte Mandell

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0971865957 ISBN 13: 9780971865952

Publisher: Melville House, 2004

Synopsis

From the maverick author of the international bestseller Who Killed Daniel Pearl? — "a gripping blend of reportage and philosophy," according to The New York Times — comes another startlingly original work of literature.

In WAR, EVIL AND THE END OF HISTORY, Bernard-Henri Lévy continues his daring investigation into the breeding grounds of terrorism with a series of riveting first-person reports from five of the world's most horrific "forgotten" war zones. In Sri Lanka, he conducts a clandestine interview with a terrified young woman escaped from a suicide-bomber training camp . . . he journeys, blindfolded, into the Colombian jungle to interview a psychotic drug lord who considers himself the successor to Che Guevara and fronts a bloodthirsty "guerilla" army . . . Lévy surreptitiously observes the nameless slaves working the diamond mines that fund an endless war in Angola . . . airdrops into a rebel stronghold in the blockaded Nuba mountains of the Sudan . . . and reports on the ongoing carnage in Burundi between Hutus and Tutsis. But Lévy is more than just a journalist: as France's leading philosopher, he follows the reports with a series of intensely personal and probing "reflections" considering how, in an enlightened, cultured, and well-informed society, these wars have acquired such a perverse "non-meaning." He considers war literature from Stendhal, Hemingway, Proust and others, and issues an excoriating response to those who have glorified it. He reconsiders his own background as a student revolutionary in Paris in May 1968, and as a 22-year-old war reporter in Bangladesh. And, in one of the book's most moving passages, he recounts his travels with Ahmad Massoud, the anti-Taliban Afghan leader assassinated hours before the September 11 attacks. Already a huge bestseller in Europe, WAR, EVIL, AND THE END OF HISTORY is the work of a scintillating intellect at the height of its powers. Bernard-Henri Lévy's previous book foresaw today's headlines about Pakistan's secret trading of nuclear technology and the nexus of terrorist groups behind the murder of Daniel Pearl. WAR, EVIL, AND THE END OF HISTORY is his brilliant foray into the next danger zones.

About this title

About the Author:

BERNARD-HENRI LÉVY is one of France's most famous philosophers and one of the bestselling writers in Europe. One of the world's preeminent journalists, he began his career as a war reporter for Combat, the famous underground newspaper founded by Camus. Lévy covered the war between Pakistan and India over Bangladesh. His 1977 book Barbarism With a Human Face caused the kind of sensation that Camus' The Rebel incited in the 1950's, and since then, Lévy's novels and essays have continued to stir up such excitement that The Guardian recently noted he is "accorded the kind of adulation in France that most countries reserve for their rock stars."

From Publishers Weekly:

One of France's most celebrated intellectuals and author of the French bestseller Who Killed Daniel Pearl? reports on five currently forgotten or marginalized war zones-Angola, Sri Lanka, Burundi, Colombia and the Sudan-and elaborates his eyewitness accounts with philosophizing about genocide, terrorism and the nature of history. The first part is philosophical travelogue, richly descriptive and highly visual in style. A lyrical yet disciplined commentator, Lévy teases out the underlying logic and cultural specificity of each site of devastation. Human encounters, such as a meeting with a young female Tamil would-be suicide bomber on the run or an interview with a jittery Marxist-Leninist revolutionary leader in Colombia, are full of intelligent observation. The two million dead of Sudan haunt the ghost towns Lévy describes, and he never spares us details of atrocities. Burundi, a scene of total desolation, comes to represent his degree zero of despair. In the book's second part, the author mingles his intellectual autobiography (early Maoist activism, his first war reporting in Bangladesh) with essays on Hegelian definitions of history, the philosophy of ruins, war nostalgia, dehumanization, the laws of war and self-reflexive musings on the role of journalism. In these stylishly fragmented discussions he draws on readings in Nietzsche, Sartre, Bataille, Benjamin, Levinas and Foucault as well as on fiction and film. Mandell's translation preserves a singularly French style of lofty questioning that some readers may find slightly dizzying, even while they glean much from his erudite contemplation of the developing world's most tragic regions.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Melville House
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0971865957
• ISBN 13: 9780971865952
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400