Viktor Frankl was a doctor who spend several years during the second world war in concentration camps and forced labour camps, including Auschwitz. He writes about his experiences in the camps and about how camp life affected people — both the prisoners and the guards.
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Some people think being an existentialist means spending your time brooding in cafés. Most people have no idea at all what it means. This book will explain what existentialism is, where it came from, and how to do it. You could call it “Existentialism for Fun and Profit”, except neither fun nor profit are really part of the existentialist programme.
Existentialism says, amongst other things, that there is no inherent meaning or purpose in life: it’s all completely contingent and arbitrary. Now, you might think that that’s a bad thing. But actually it’s good: since we have free will, we are therefore free to create our own meaning for our own lives.
The Guardian called The Fall “the most perfect of his meditations on human isolation and bewilderment before an enigmatic universe.” Yet for all that, I really enjoyed it. It even made me laugh in some places. Well, smile at least. Grimly.
