In this collection of essays, writer, critic, poet, and artist John Burger (19262017) discusses the horrors of modern warfare, terrorism, and the nature of all-consuming despair. In the pages of the book, he shows us the lives of people for whom this feeling has become a faithful companion - the poor and refugees from Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq, Syria - and proposes to divide their mourning by forcibly taken away freedom. Referring to the plots of films by Paolo Pasolini , Francis Bacon , Photographs of Ahlam Shibli and Yitki Hanzlova and recalling "Looking at other people's suffering" by Susan Sontag, Burger analyzes, how art as an instrument of resistance to repressive policies can help defeat pain Fear and hate.