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Mihail Sebastian was born in Romania in 1907 as Iosef Hecter. He worked as a lawyer and writer until anti-Semitic legislation forced him to abandon his public career. Having survived the war and the Holocaust, he was killed in a road accident early in 1945 as he was crossing the street to teach his first class. His long-lost diary, Journal 1935-1944: The Fascist Years, was published to great acclaim in the late 1990s.
[Praise for Sebastian's Journal 1935-1944] This book is alive, a human soul lives in it, along with the unfolding ghastliness of the last century, which passed an inch away from Sebastian's nose. His prose is like something Chekov might have written - the same modesty, candour, and subtleness of observation. Here is a life, and an absurd death, whose spell will last a long time -- Arthur Miller Deserves to be on the same shelf as Anne Frank's Diary and to find as huge a readership -- Philip Roth A humane masterpiece -- Paul Bailey Times Literary Supplement Brilliantly haunting BBC History Moving, perceptive and sharply observed... the Journal is a valuable addition not just to the canon of wartime and holocaust literature, but to that of all humanity Literary Review
