Critic, translator, poet, essayist, Édouard Roditi (1910-1992) was a singular witness to the twentieth century. Roditi was born in Paris and had Sephardic ancestors of Greek, Spanish, and Italian origins on his father’s side and Catholic and Ashkenazi Jewish connections on his mother’s. A published surrealist poet by eighteen, Roditi would become an interpreter at the Nuremberg trials, a highly regarded literary translator, a contributor to many LGBTQ publications from Arcadie to Gay Sunshine, and a perceptive social analyst whose outspoken views irritated American, Soviet, and French authorities by turns. From his family history and childhood to Berlin in the immediate post-war years, French decolonization, and essays on writers such as André Breton, Hart Crane, Italo Svevo, and Maurice Sachs, Roditi's writings over six decades are a unique account of a life lived at the flashpoints of history and at the margins of society, providing acute and unsparing observations of literature and political events.