This week’s Critic At Large essay, by Adam Thirlwell, salutes the legacy of writers from central Europe. In the clip above, the great essayist E M Cioran and his fellow Romanian author Petre Tutea discuss each other’s work.
Cioran tells an ironic tale of Tuţea’s early interest in Marxism (both men would briefly become sympathisers of the far-right Romanian Iron Guard movement), while Tutea explores Cioran’s abiding scepticism and analyses his lifelong struggle with the divine.