In this collection of essays and epigrams, E.M. Cioran gives us portraits and evaluations-which he calls "admirations"-of Samuel Beckett, Jorge Luis Borges, F. Scott Fitzgerald, the poet Paul Valery, and Mircea Eliade, among others. In alternating sections of aphorisms-his "anathemas"-he delivers insights on such topics as solitude, flattery, vanity, friendship, insomnia, music, mortality, God, and the lure of disillusion.