On the Shortness of Life

Nov 12, 2025 8:08 PM

Author:Seneca

Timeless advice on the art of living well, from the celebrated Penguin Great Ideas series

The writings of the ancient Roman philosopher Seneca offer powerful insights into stoicism, morality and the importance of reason, and continue to provide profound guidance to many through their eloquence, lucidity and wisdom.

Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. The Penguin Great Ideas series brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization, and helped make us who we are.

Reviews

A powerful study of lust, degradation and fantasy

—— Observer

It says something about the loneliness, about the craving for love, about the relation between master and slave and between white and black, and about man's earthly anguish and longing for salvation - in a way you do not easily escape from once it has gripped you

—— Andre Brink

The writing and mood are a remarkable piece of sustained intensity... One false word could have ruined this short tour de force completely. It never does

—— Daily Telegraph

An intellectual lyric which sings the absence of history, the electric lull before history breaks... As a piece of cultural psychoanalysis and diagnosis, it's glitteringly precise

—— Tom Paulin

A truly terrifying horror story with some interestingly radical underpinnings

—— I-D

Mr Greens' extraordinary power of plot-making, of suspense and of narration...moves continuously both in time and space and in emotion

—— The Times

His style is spare, that's what is so beautiful. His novels are genuine romans philosophies - novels illustrating ideas

—— Piers Paul Read

In a class by himself...the ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century man’s consciousness and anxiety

—— William Golding

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