E. M. Cioran left his native land of Romania for Paris in the late 1930s, where he livedand wrote until his death in 1995. His many books include Anathemas and Admirations,Drawn and Quartered, A Short History of Decay, and The Trouble with Being Born.nbsp;
Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston (1952--2005) was Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Indiana University, Bloomington. She translated two books by E. M. Cioran from Romanian, On the Heights of Despair and Tears and Saints, and is author of To Kill a Text: The Dialogic Fiction of Hugo, Dickens and Zola.Kenneth R. Johnston is Professor of English Emeritus at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is author of The Hidden Wordsworth: Poet, Lover, Rebel, Spy and co-editor of Romantic Revolutions: Criticism and Theory (IUP, 1990). He lives in Chicago, Illinois.