Because he has received death threats from several ultra-fanatical and extremist groups (particulary in response to a dozen anti-Islam drawings, which are in no way central to a book containing over 800 pages), the author has chosen to hide behind the pseudonym of Eric Von Gerö. Born in colonial Africa, the son of a Spanish landowner and an Austro-Hungarian aristocrat, he has studied at exclusive schools in Paris and Madrid, and has read Law and Philosophy. 

Fascinated by suicide since he attained the use of reason, at the age of 19 he joined the London branch of Exit International and, one year later and thanks to donations from generous sponsors, he founded Hegesias, a cultural organisation for the study of Suicide from a metaphysical point of view. After several flirtations with self-destruction, he published a series of treatises and dissertations, including “Hegesias, Elogio del Suicidio” (“Hegesias, Elegy of a Suicide”), “Suicidio para principiantes” (“Suicide for Beginners”) and “Aforismos contra todo” (“Maxims Against All”), which were banned by the censors and were distributed clandestinely. To prepare his masterwork “A Vindication of Metasuicide”, he devoured thousands of books on philosophy as well as almost all the other disciplines, and was an assiduous reader at the national libraries of Madrid, Paris and London.

In his professional life the author is a successful businessman, and chair of the Sinmortigo Foundation. Paradoxically, although he maintains that life is a torment not worth living and advocates for the extinction of humanity, maintaining that Suicide is the only honourable response, he is not a bitter or unhappy person, but an apparently happy one. Those who know him describe him as a smiling pessimist. Economically privileged, happy in his sentimental and social life, he could be described as a hedonist malgré lui.