True happiness

The editorial phenomenon that sold +3000000 copies

“True happiness is not the absence of pain, but the ability to coexist with what hurts, and still find meaning.”

Beyond the Illusion

As an impossibility and a mirage, a goal and a mandate, the idea of happiness haunts us more than ever in these times. “How can we be happy?”—this question, now a modern-day imperative, dazzles us into losing sight of the one we should truly be asking: “What is happiness?”

In his new book, Gabriel Rolón invites us to retrace our steps. To dismantle clichés and preconceptions in order to expose what lies beyond this illusion—sold to us as a panacea but little more than a trap. Drawing from psychoanalysis and the arts, from philosophy and literature, he maps out a journey that traverses classical mythology and thinkers like Byung-Chul Han, Freud, Lacan, Borges, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Einstein, Alejandro Dolina, Anne Frank, Bertrand Russell, and Comte-Sponville, among many others.

Once again, staying true to the style that has made him one of the most widely read authors of recent decades, Rolón challenges us to think against the grain of passing trends. And it is in that uneasy yet life-affirming space where happiness becomes a vital, lucid, and deeply human essay.