‘At the Existentialist Café’ Released in Persian

‘At the Existentialist Café,’ a thoughtful inquiry in a philosophical movement by British nonfiction writer Sarah Bakewell, 54, is now available in Persian.

The book whose complete title is ‘At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being and Apricot Cocktails,’ is one of the New York Times‘ ten best books for 2016, Mehr News Agency reported.

It was first published by Other Press, an independent publisher of literary fiction and nonfiction, based in New York. Other Press has also published Bakewell’s biography titled ‘How to Live.’ 

The Persian translation is by translator Houshmand Dehqan and has been released by Tehran-based Payam-Emrouz Publicaction.

“The author of ‘How to Live’ has written another impressively lucid book, one that offers a joint portrait of the giants of existentialism and phenomenology: Sartre, Beauvoir, Camus, Jaspers, Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger and a half-dozen other European writers and philosophers,” The New York Times wrote in its book review.

“Some of Bakewell’s most exciting pages present engaged accounts of complex philosophies, even ones that finally repel her…” 

Existentialism emphasizes the uniqueness and isolation of individual experience in a hostile or indifferent universe, regards human existence as unexplainable and stresses freedom of choice and the responsibility for the consequences of one’s actions.