An veteran man of letters, whose essays and criticisms often dealt with the paradox of literature’s moral power and its impotence in the face of events like the Holocaust, has died at the age of 90.

George Steiner was an essayist, fiction writer, teacher, scholar and literary critic who was senior book reviewer for The New Yorker from the 60s to the late 90s.  He often railed against what the education system and what it wasn’t teaching.

Steiner was fluent in English, French and and German. He was born in France, moved to New York City in 1940 where he became a naturalized US citizen.

He was a Rhodes Scholar, who lectured at Harvard, taught at Princeton and then at Cambridge University in England.

He died yesterday at his home in Cambridge.

Geroge Steiner was 90.