"A writer is someone who pays attention to the world," Susan Sontag said in her 2003 acceptance speech for the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, and no one exemplified this definition more than she. Sontag’s incisive intelligence, expressive brilliance, and deep curiosity about art, politics, and the writer’s responsibility to bear witness have secured her place as one of the most important thinkers and writers of the twentieth century. At the Same Time gathers sixteen essays and addresses written in the last years of Sontag’s life, when her work was being honored on the international stage, that reflect on the personally liberating nature of literature, her deepest commitment, and on political activism and resistance to injustice as an ethical duty. She considers the works of writers from the little-known Soviet novelist Leonid Tsypkin, who struggled and eventually succeeded in publishing his only book days before his death; to the greats, such as Nadine Gordimer, who enlarge our capacity for moral judgment. Sontag also fearlessly addresses the dilemmas of post-9/11 America, from the degradation of our political rhetoric to the appalling torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib. At the Same Time, which includes a foreword by her son, David Rieff, is a passionate, compelling work from an American writer at the height of her powers, who always saw literature "as a passport to enter a larger life, the zone of freedom."

蘇珊·桑塔格，1933年生於美國紐約，畢業於芝加哥大學。1993年當選為美國文學藝術學院院士。她是美國聲名卓著的“新知識分子”，與西濛娜·波伏瓦、漢娜·阿倫特並稱為西方當代最重要的女知識分子，被譽為“美國公眾的良心”。2000年獲美國國傢圖書奬，2001年獲耶路撒冷國際文學奬，2003年獲德國圖書大奬——德國書業和平奬。2004年12月28日病逝於紐約。