Diogenes

The ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes went about with a lantern in search of an honest man.

For everyone else, Diogenes will leave us his advice on life without work: “Why then do you live, if you do not care to live well?”

Other recent titles include “How to Say No,” selections from Diogenes and the Cynics chosen and translated by M.D.

His carved figure of the revolutionary Cuban poet José Martí, body caked with mud, glass eyes gleaming, hand gripping a machete like a Diogenes lamp, has haunted me ever since.

He had received scores of rejections when, in 1997, the Swiss publisher Diogenes Verlag accepted his novel “Death and the Penguin.”