Upon its publication in 1966, Moment of Freedom was widely acclaimed in Europe as a masterpiece. It was published by W.W. Norton nearly twenty-five years ago, but has long been out of print. We are pleased to make it available once again in an updated translation.

In its apocalyptic view of mankind and in its haunting, devastating portrayal of justice, Moment of Freedom reminds one of the Book of Revelation and Kafka's The Trial. Living high in the Alps in a German principality called Heiligenberg, our narrator tells us that he's dutifully fulfilling his obligations as a Servant of Justice and acting as a daily witness to injustice masquerading as a court of law. One day in the courtroom he notices that the judge is much too engrossed in looking at something concealed in his folder to pay attention to the proceedings. The something turns out to be some pornographic photographs showing various other pillars of the town engaged in a variety of sexual activities with minors.

The incident propels him on a mental journey back through his life: dreams and hallucinations, black-humor fantasies and suicidal drinking binges; the Roman catacombs, warm summer nights in Brooklyn; brothels in Stockholm; his childhood in Norway, and wanderings in Germany and Italy. But aside from the court records he has been keeping his own long and detailed account of man's cruelty to man in a massive twelve-volume study he calls his History of Bestiality. Acknowledging his Germanic past, the narrator realizes that all his attempts to perceive order in life lead only to his acceptance of the chaos of life. With echoes of Nietzsche and Sartre, we see him striving to live uncoerced by power, unpersuaded by friends, to take for himself the liberty of stating his critique in order to live in his own moment of truth, to stand "far out at the edge of the abyss."