Lev Shestov created a new science - the psychology of philosophy. He understood individual philosophical discourses as the attempts of their authors to conceal their personal traumas. In his book, Matthew Beaumont brilliantly reconstructs the main themes of Shestov's writing and his influence on European philosophy of the 20th Century. Necessary reading for everybody interested in modern European intellectual history.

Boris Groys, Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies, New York University, USA

Matthew Beaumont reflects on what we can learn from an insomniac who has spent his sleepless nights trying to unravel the stems of suffering and brutality. Shestov is beset by missed encounters, and Beaumont comes to make good those absences, tangling Shestov's thoughts with the moral and critical thinking of his contemporaries and ours.

Esther Leslie, Professor in Political Aesthetics, Birkbeck University of London, UK

Matthew Beaumont’s book on Shestov weaves the thread of sleeplessness into a gripping reconstruction of the philosopher’s journey across some of the defining Gethsemane moments of the twentieth-century with a political commentator’s sense of momentous encounters.

Ramona Fotiade, Reader in French, University of Glasgow, UK