The Power of Indignation: The Autobiography of the Man Who Inspired the Arab Spring

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.”

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.

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.