Starred Review. Literature and politics are inextricably intertwined and unified by moral purpose in this powerful collection of pieces (a couple not previously published in English or at all) by iconic critic and novelist Sontag (Regarding the Pain of Others), who died in 2004. Sontag was a dedicated champion of literature in translation, and the book opens with several introductions to such works, led off by a meditation on beauty. The section might have been called "Art and Ardor," so laced is it with artistic passion, both Sontag's own and that of the writers she celebrates, such as Leonid Tsypkin and Anna Banti.

Preface by Paolo Dilonardo and Anne Jump

Foreword by David Rieff

An Argument About Beauty

1926 ... Pasternak, Tsvetayeva, Rilke

Loving Dostoyevsky

A Double Destiny: On Anna Banti's Artemisia

Unextinguished: The Case for Victor Serge

Outlandish: On Halld6r Laxness's Under the Glacier

9.11.01

A Few Weeks After

One Year After

Photography: A Little Summa

Regarding the Torture of Others

The Conscience of Words

The World as India

On Courage and Resistance

Literature Is Freedom

At the Same Time: The Novelist and Moral Reasoning

Acknowledgments