"Greece has long been a country with `too much history,' a harbinger of broader developments in Europe. In the course of its recent crisis it provided the testing ground for several political approaches. Failure was general, but none was greater than the abject capitulation of Syriza. Alain Badiou surveys the wreckage calmly and with sadness, seeking the reinvention of a radical and class-based politics. This is indeed what Europe needs today, and the only positive outcome from the Syriza debacle." Costas Lapavitsas, SOAS, University of London "One of the most important philosophers writing today." Joan Copjec "A figure like Plato or Hegel walks here among us!" Slavoj Zizek "An heir to Jean-Paul Sartre and Louis Althusser." New Statesman "Badiou's sardonically compressed style is never less than pungent." Guardian "A thinker of tremendously invigorating moral fervour, able to rise to Swiftian scorn or fine Cocteau-like flourishes. Badiou's passionate belief in human autonomy is inspiring." Daily Telegraph "Scarcely any other moral thinker of our day is as politically clear-sighted and courageously polemical, so prepared to put notions of truth and universality back on the agenda." Terry Eagleton

Alain Badiou teaches philosophy at the Ecole normale superieure and the College international de philosophie in Paris. In addition to several novels, plays and political essays, he has published a number of major philosophical works, including Theory of the Subject and Being and Event, Manifesto for Philosophy and Gilles Deleuze. His recent books include Ethics, Metapolitics, The Communist Hypothesis, and Wittgenstein's Anti-Philosophy.