Authors

Tzvetan Todorov

Researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (Paris), historian and philosopher.

With his flight from totalitarian communism in 1963, he adopted French nationality and settled in Paris where he studied Philosophy of Language. He has taught in the École Pratique des Hautes Études and at Yale University, and has also given master classes in the classrooms of the universities of New York, Columbia, Harvard and California. In his country of adoption, he has been director of the Research Centre for Arts and Language in the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) since 1987.

A prolific writer, he has cultivated almost all the literary genres, his work ranging from literary criticism to the expressions of a man displaced by the barriers established by the new world order. Notable among his titles are El hombre desplazado (The Displaced Man, 1998), Los abusos de la memoria (The Uses and Abuses of Memory, 2000), Crítica de la crítica (Critique of Criticism, 2005), Memoria del mal, tentación del bien (Memory of Evil, Temptation of Good, 2002), El nuevo desorden mundial: reflexiones de un europeo (The New World Disorder: Reflections of a European, 2003), Elogio del individuo. Ensayo sobre la pintura flamenca del Renacimiento (In Praise of the Individual. Essay on Flemish Renaissance Painting, 2006), Los aventureros del absoluto (Adventurers of the Absolute, 2007), El espíritu de la Ilustración (The Enlightenment Spirit, 2008) and El miedo a los bárbaros (Fear of Barbarians, 2008). Among the awards he has received are the Medal of the Order of Arts and Letters and the 2008 Prince of Asturias Prize for Social Sciences.