**AN ECONOMIST, GUARDIAN AND NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEARA gripping narrative of the intertwined lives of the four philosophers whose ideas reshaped the twentieth century**The year is 1919. Walter Benjamin flees his overbearing father to scrape a living as a critic. Ludwig Wittgenstein, scion of one of Europe's wealthiest families, signs away his inheritance, seeking spiritual clarity. Martin Heidegger renounces his faith and aligns his fortunes...

'The question Eilenberger sets out to answer in this ambitious, enthralling book: what use is philosophy in the middle of a war?' The Sunday TimesThe year is 1933. Hannah Arendt escapes Berlin, seeking refuge among the stateless gathering in Paris. Simone de Beauvoir reimagines the dance between consciousness and the world outside in a Rouen café. Ayn Rand labours in Hollywood exile on the novel she believes destined to reignite the flame of liberty in her...

Brought to you by Penguin.The year is 1919. Walter Benjamin flees his overbearing father to scrape a living as a jobbing critic. Ludwig Wittgenstein signs away his inheritance to teach schoolchildren in a provincial Austrian village, seeking spiritual clarity. Martin Heidegger renounces his faith and align his fortunes with the phenomenological school of Edmund Husserl. Ernst Cassirer sketches a new schema of human culture at the back of a cramped Berlin tram. The ...

The year is 1949. Theodor Adorno returns from New York to bombed-out Frankfurt, tasked with finding enlightenment from within ruin. Susan Sontag is reborn in San Francisco. Michel Foucault attempts suicide, again, in Paris. Paul Feyerabend, crippled by a war wound, recircles his native Vienna. The war's aftermath calls for the world to be remade, and over the coming decades this quartet of thinkers will revolutionise how we think about society, culture and science.The Haunted P...