E. M. Cioran

Emil M. Cioran (1911-1995) was a Romanian-born philosopher and essayist renowned for his philosophical pessimism, aphoristic style, and explorations of suffering, nihilism, and decay. Born in Rasinari, Romania, to a Greek Orthodox priest, he published his first book *On the Heights of Despair* in Romanian in 1934 before moving to Paris in 1937, where he lived in seclusion, wrote in French starting with *A Short History of Decay* in 1949, and became a French citizen.[1][2]