Prolific essayist, translator, and critic Pascal Quignard has described his Last Kingdom series as something unique. It consists, he says, “neither of philosophical argumentation, nor short learned essays, nor novelistic narration,” but comes, rather, from a phase of his work in which the very concept of genre has been allowed to fall away, leaving an entirely modern, secular, and abnormal vision of the world.In Abysses, the newest addition to the series, Quignard brings u...

Throughout Pascal Quignard’s distinguished literary career, music has been a recurring obsession. As a musician he organized the International Festival of Baroque Opera and Theatre at Versailles in the early 1990s, and thus was instrumental in the rediscovery of much forgotten classical music. Yet in 1994 he abruptly renounced all musical activities. The Hatred of Music is Quignard’s masterful exploration of the power of music and what history reveals about the dangers it poses.

"A genuine spiritual quest. . . . Extraordinary." — New York TimesAmong the most profound and influential explorations of mind-expanding psychedelic drugs ever written, this landmark work of consciousness exploration includes two complete classic books—The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell—in which Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World, reveals the mind's remote frontiers and the unmapped areas of human consciou...

**An eye-opening biography of one of the most influential psychiatrists of the modern age, drawing from his lectures, conversations, and own writings."An important, firsthand document for readers who wish to understand this seminal writer and thinker." —Booklist**In the spring of 1957, when he was eighty-one years old, Carl Gustav Jung undertook the telling of his life story*. Memories, Dreams, Reflections* is that book, composed of conversations with his colleague...

This is the book that Daniel Tammet, bestselling author and mathematical savant, was born to write. In Tammet's world, numbers are beautiful and mathematics illuminates our lives and minds. Using anecdotes and everyday examples, Tammet allows us to share his unique insights and delight in the way numbers, fractions and equations underpin all our lives.Inspired by the complexity of snowflakes, Anne Boleyn's sixth finger or his mother's unpredictable behaviour, Tammet explores questio...

“These brief Ficciones have to be read one at a time, and slowly; then they throb with uncanny and haunting power.” —The Atlantic MonthlyThe seventeen pieces in Ficciones demonstrate the gargantuan powers of imagination, intelligence, and style of one of the greatest writers of this or any other century.Borges sends us on a journey into a compelling, bizarre, and profoundly resonant realm; we enter the fearful sph...

The classic by Latin America's finest writer of the twentieth century—a true literary sensation—with an introduction by cyber-author William Gibson.The groundbreaking trans-genre work of Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) has been insinuating itself into the structure, stance, and very breath of world literature for well over half a century. Multi-layered, self-referential, elusive, and allusive writing is now frequently labeled Borgesian. Umberto Eco...

This essay collection by the revered public intellectual displays his " profound erudition, lively wit, and passion for ideas of all shapes and sizes" ( Booklist).In these fourteen essays, Umberto Eco examines many of the ideas that have inspired his provocative and illuminating fiction. From the title essay—a disquisition of the notion that every country needs an enemy—he takes readers on an exploration of lost islands, mythical realms, a...

“No one has ever managed to make the pursuit of knowledge feel more soulful or more immediate than Loren Eiseley . . . ” —Ben Cosgrove, The Daily BeastAt the height of a distinguished career as a paleontologist, Loren Eiseley turned from fieldwork and scientific publication to the personal essay. Here, in The Unexpected Universe, he displays his far-reaching knowledge and searching curiosity about the natural world, and the qualities that led many...

Over the course of nineteen essays, Alan Watts ("a spiritual polymatch, the first and possibly greatest" —Deepak Chopra) ruminates on the philosophy of nature, ecology, aesthetics, religion, and metaphysics.Assembled in the form of a “mountain journal,” written during a retreat in the foothills of Mount Tamalpais, CA, Cloud-Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown is Watts’s meditation on the art of feeling out and following the watercourse way of nature, known in Chin...

A new translation finally appears of one of the seminal books in the history of literature. Adored by the Surrealists, Les Chants de Maldoror was hailed by them as a dark progenitor of their movement, and its author, Le Comte de Lautréamont (Isidore Ducasse) elevated to the status of literary idol. It was in these pages that André Breton discovered the phrase which would come to represent the Surrealist doctrine of objective chance: as beautiful as the random encounter between an umbrella ...

In The Four Elements, poet and philosopher John O'Donohue draws upon his Celtic heritage and the love of his native landscape, the west of Ireland, to weave together a tapestry of beautifully evoked images of nature. As John explores a range of themes relating to the way we live our lives today, he reveals how the energy and rhythm of the natural world - its innocence and creativity, its power and splendour - hold profound lessons for us all.With a foreword written by his ...