Description: A book for our times: a moving meditation on the tension between loneliness and freedom, individualism and love.
At no time before have so many people lived alone, and never has loneliness been so widely or keenly felt. Why, in a society of individualists, is living alone perceived as a shameful failure? And can we ever be happy on our own? Drawing on personal experience, as well as philosophy and sociology, Daniel Schreiber explores the tension between the desire for solitude and freedom, and the desire for companionship, intimacy, and love. Along the way he illuminates the role that friendships play in our lives--can they be a response to the loss of meaning in a world in crisis? A profoundly enlightening book on how we want to live, Alone spent almost a year on Germany's bestseller list.Brief description: Daniel Schreiber is the author of Susan Sontag, the first complete biography of the intellectual icon, as well as the highly praised and bestselling German-language literary essays Nüchtern and Zuhause. He lives in Berlin.
Review Quotes: "A heartfelt memoir on being single, living alone and the existential experience of loneliness. . . . A study of intimacy and independence. . . . Alone is also a very personal narrative, one that covers friendship, sexuality, depression and ageing. Schreiber's observations are heartfelt, particularly the ideas that even the most acute loneliness can bring us something."-- "Financial Times"