
' He who thinks freely for himself honours all freedom on earth' Stefan Zweig was already an emigre-driven from a Europe torn apart by brutality & totalitarianism-when he found in a damp cellar a copy of Michel de Montaigne's Essais Montaigne would become Zweig's last great occupation helping him make sense of his own life & his obsessions-with personal freedom with the sanctity of the individual Through his writings on suicide he would also finally lead Zweig to his death With the intense psychological acuity & elegant prose so characteristic of Zweig's fiction this account of Montaigne's life asks how we ought to think & how to live It is an intense & wonderful insight into both subject & biographer