Author(s): Michael Ignatieff

Philosophy

This brilliant and penetrating book uncovers a crisis in the political imagination, a wide-spread failure to provide the passionate sense of community in which our need for belonging can be met . Seeking the answers to fundamental questions, Michael Ignatieff writes vividly both about ideas and about the people who tried to live by them - from Augustine to Bosch, from Rousseau to Simone Weil. Incisive and moving, The Needs of Strangers return to philosophy to its proper place, as a guide to the art of being human.

Review: 'Michael Ignatieff writes an urgent prose... he will convince people, in highly readable fashion, that the ideas he discusses really matter' - Salman Rushdie

'Beautifully written and profoundly thoughtful' - New Statesman

'Elegant meditations on human need' - New Republic

Author Biography: Michael Ignatieff is a writer, historian and former politician. He has taught at Cambridge, Oxford, the University of Toronto and Harvard and is currently university professor at Central European University in Vienna. His books, which have been translated into twelve languages, include Blood and Belonging, Isaiah Berlin, The Needs of Strangers and The Russian Album, all published or forthcoming with Pushkin Press, and On Consolation.