"Independent Spirit introduces to American readers the work of Hubert Butler (1900-91), a writer of uncommon elegance and power, whose essays on an amazing range of subjects are gathered here for the first time in the United States." "Born to an Anglo-Irish Protestant family which had lived in Kilkenny from the twelfth century, Butler was passionately devoted to the cause of Irish political and cultural independence. An astute, intrepid international observer as well as a canny writer about his own country, he taught English in Leningrad on the morrow of the Revolution, worked in Vienna for the liberation of Austrian Jews after the Anschluss, investigated the deportation of four thousand children in Vichy France, and exposed the Vatican's complicity in a campaign to forcibly convert Orthodox Serbs in Catholic Croatia. His essays on these and other dramas of modern history are small masterpieces, and so are his considerations of Irish history and Irish writers; of English and American literature; of fascist and anti-fascist politics before, during, and after the war; of life in Riga and in Zagreb; of the tone and meaning of country life in the corner of Ireland he called home." "Independent Spirit also includes Butler's masterful explorations of the moral and political issues embedded in decisions about abortion and euthanasia. Throughout, Butler's prose exhibits the precision, beauty, and bold originality of a rare European master."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved