Book returned to library after 37 years
A repentant borrower has returned a book to a library in a town in eastern Sweden 37 years after it first went missing from the shelves.
The book, 'An Essay on Liberation' by German Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse (1898 - 1979), was placed back on the shelves at Gävle library on Thursday after arriving at its original home inside an anonymous package.
It is not entirely inconceivable that the unnamed borrower spent the last few decades trying to decipher the main hypotheses put forward in the essay:
"The question is no longer: how can the individual satisfy his own needs without hurting others, but rather: how can he satisfy his needs without hurting himself, without reproducing, through his aspirations and satisfactions, his dependence on an exploitative apparatus which, in satisfying his needs, perpetuates his servitude?"
The book was stamped with a latest return date of November 11th 1971.
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The book, 'An Essay on Liberation' by German Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse (1898 - 1979), was placed back on the shelves at Gävle library on Thursday after arriving at its original home inside an anonymous package.
It is not entirely inconceivable that the unnamed borrower spent the last few decades trying to decipher the main hypotheses put forward in the essay:
"The question is no longer: how can the individual satisfy his own needs without hurting others, but rather: how can he satisfy his needs without hurting himself, without reproducing, through his aspirations and satisfactions, his dependence on an exploitative apparatus which, in satisfying his needs, perpetuates his servitude?"
The book was stamped with a latest return date of November 11th 1971.
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