My Unwritten Books

Steiner did not write the books because intimacies and indiscretions were too threatening. Because the topic brought too much pain. Because its emotional or intellectual challenge proved beyond his capacities. The actual themes range widely and defy conventional taboos: the torment of the gifted when they live among the very great; the experience of sex in different languages; Zionism; a more intense love for animals than for human beings; the costly privilege of exile; a theology of emptiness.

Extraordinary Fellow of Churchill College at Cambridge University and the author of dozens of books (The Death of Tragedy, After Babel, Martin Heidegger, In Bluebeard's Castle), George Steiner is one of the world's foremost intellectuals.