On Love and Tyranny: The Life and Politics of Hannah Arendt

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Hannah Arendt lived through the darkest of times, yet she made it her life's work to illuminate them. Interrogated in Hitler's Germany and held at an internment camp in occupied France, she bore direct witness to some of the most catastrophic events of 20th-century history. In her indispensable writings, Arendt trained her fearless intellect on the intractable problems she observed: exile, totalitarianism, the nature of responsibility and the moral problem of evil.

In this immersive new biography, Ann Heberlein shows that these issues were not just theoretical for Arendt - they were also personal. On Love and Tyranny ranges over her dramatic life, from her formative affair with Nazi sympathiser Martin Heidegger to her complex love for her husband Heinrich Blucher, tracking her repeated flights from fascist authorities and eventual journey from statelessness to American citizenship. What emerges is a complex, riveting portrait of an essential thinker, who turned personal and political tumult into work of enduring relevance.

Reviews

'Brings [Arendt] vividly to life' - New European

'As exciting and gripping as a novel... The story of Hannah Arendt is captivating and her ideas are more relevant now than ever' - Varlden Idag

'A thoroughly gripping, enthralling and multifaceted read' - Smedjan

'Brilliantly reveals Arendt's thinking . . . effortlessly readable. . . astonishing' - Winnipeg Free Press

'Heberlein's book, superbly translated by Alice Menzies, combines rigorous biographical research with a novelistic story of Arendt's passion... The good, the bad, the ugly and the beautiful are thoroughly explored in Heberlein's multi-layered and compelling book' - St. Louis Jewish Light

Author Bio

Ann Heberlein is the bestselling author of more than a dozen books, including A Little Book on Evil, A Good Life, and the autobiographical I Don't Want to Die, I Just Don't Want to Live. In 2018, she debuted as a fiction writer with the novel Everything Is Going to Be All Right. Heberlein has researched and taught at the Department of Practical Philosophy at Stockholm University and at the Faculty of Theology, Lund University.