Pascal Bruckner is the bestselling author of many books including The Tyranny of Guilt, Perpetual Euphoria and The Fanaticism of the Apocalyse.

"Pascal Bruckner is a singular prose stylist and 'moralist' par excellence: the heir to a venerable French literary tradition that was honed during the grand siècle by La Rochefoucauld and La Bruyère and emulated by Nietzsche in Human, All Too Human (1878). In an age of obligatory groupthink, Bruckner's talents as a witty expositor of human folly have become invaluable. I Suffer Therefore I Am exemplifies Bruckner at his very best!"Richard Wolin, Graduate Centre, City University of New York"Reparations, Bruckner explains, have replaced redemption in our secularized world. To demonstrate this claim, Bruckner brings to bear a formidable arsenal of fascinating examples from contemporary life – political, cultural, social, and psychological – to make the point, quite forcefully in fact. Some examples are troubling, others so ludicrous as to make the reader literally laugh out loud. An important, erudite book." Richard J. Golsan, Texas A&M University"Masterful"Simon Heffer, The Daily Telegraph"A merciless analysis of the self-proclaimed victims of our time, all those who make it a life project to expose their suffering with sighs and groans - with professional methods on the public stage."NY TID"Bracing, erudite and stark"Spiked"Bruckner's contention that we are living in a pantheon of victimhood, and that interest groups co-opt the Holocaust for their own ends, is clearly right. This is a form of emotional terrorism, whose perpetrators feel entitled to invert normal rules of morality."The Critic"Self-pity, blubbering, complaints: a French philosopher argues that suffering has become too powerful a force in Western culture, and such masochism, based on ersatz guilt, will be our ruin... Read him and, whatever you do, don't weep."The Greatest Books of 2025, The Telegraph

• Prologue: An inverted PantheonIntroduction: Thucydides and Jesus ChristPART ONE: FACING MISFORTUNEChapter 1: ‘One day all will be well, so runs our hope’Chapter 2. All kinds of awfulChapter 3. Suffering produces lawsChapter 4. The one-upmanship of martyrdomPART TWO: VICTIMIST COMPETITIONChapter 5. The thieves of sufferingChapter 6. Putin, or the petty civil servant of crimeChapter 7. Towards a generalised ‘gynocide’?Chapter 8. Decolonise the decolonisers?PART THREE: HOW CAN WE LIVE WITH OUR WOUNDS?Chapter 9. Barbarity as a cover-up?Chapter 10: Healing the past?Chapter 11. The hero, an ambiguous antithesisChapter 12. Is this how men live? (Louis Aragon)ConclusionNotes