BOOK REVIEW / Recent paperbacks: The Trouble with Being Born - E H Cioran: Quartet, pounds 8.95

E H Cioran is the Nietzsche for a post-Nietzschean age: he writes in the same kind of aphoristic, anti-systematic style. But he is unable to be moved, to proselytise or to dream, and most readers will find that a few of his aphorisms go a long way: 'There's no point in killing yourself, because you always kill yourself too late,' or: 'If I used to ask myself, over a coffin: 'What good did it do the occupant to be born?' I now put the same question about anyone alive.'