'A poetic, erudite exploration of history and myth' Financial TimesAn unforgettable journey through centuries and across cultures to the pivotal moment in evolution - when humans did something that no species had yet tried - when we became the hunter and no longer the prey. Informed by Greek and Egyptian myth, the stories of poets, shamans and gods, Roberto Calasso's expansive exploration of our relationship to animals and sacrifice, encourages us to refra...

In this analysis of human history and myth, "[Calasso's] flow of associations leaves you feeling not out of your depth, but smarter and better read" ( The New York Times Book Review).A New York Times Book Review Editors' ChoiceThere was a time, even before prehistory, when man was simply a defenseless animal. The gods he worshiped took the form of other beasts or were the patterns of the stars he saw above him each night in the sky, which h...

'To read Ka is to experience a giddy invasion of stories - brilliant, enigmatic, troubling, outrageous, erotic, beautiful' The New York Times'Who?' - or 'ka' - is the question that runs through Roberto Calasso's retelling of the stories of the minds and gods of India; the primordial question that continues to haunt human existence. From the Rigveda to the Upanishads, the Mahabharata to the life of Buddha, this b...

'Tiepolo: the last breath of happiness in Europe'The eighteenth-century Venetian painter Giambattista Tiepolo spent his life creating frescoes that are among the glories of Western art, yet he remains shrouded in mystery. Who was he? And what was the significance of the dark, bizarre etchings depicting sacrifice and magic, which he created alongside his heavenly works? Roberto Calasso explores Tiepolo as the last artist of the ancien régime and at the same time the first e...

What are Kafka's stories about? Are they dreams? Allegories? Symbols? Things that happen every day? But where and when?In this remarkable book, Roberto Calasso sets out not to dispel the mystery but to let it be illuminated by its own light. With his unique vision, imagination, and intellectual acumen, Calasso attempts to enter the flow, the tortuous movement, the physiology of the stories to discover what they are meant to signify and to delve into the most basic question: Who is ...

An immersive and mesmerizing narrative that reimagines the Mesopotamian myth of the Great FloodA long time ago, the gods grew tired of humans and decided to send a flood to destroy them. But Ea, the god of fresh underground water, didn't agree. He advised one of his devotees, Utnapishtim, to build a quadrangular boat to house humans and animals, and saved these living creatures from the Flood.Rather than punish Utnapishtim for his disobedience, Enlil, King ...

Roberto Calasso, "a literary institution of one" (The Paris Review), tells the story of the eternal life of Utnapishtim, the savior of man, in the eleventh part of his great literary project.A long time ago, the gods grew tired of humans, who were making too much noise and disturbing their sleep, and they decided to send a Flood to destroy them. But Ea, the god of fresh underground water, didn’t agree and advised one of his favorite mortals, Utnapishtim, t...

An "erudite" translation of a classic work on violence and revolution as seen through mythology and art offers "unsettling observations on civilization" ( Kirkus Reviews).The Ruin of Kasch takes up two subjects—"the first is Talleyrand, and the second is everything else," wrote Italo Calvino when the book first appeared in 1983. Hailed as one of those rare books that persuade us to see our entire civilization in a new light, its guide is the French...

Tourists, terrorists, secularists, hackers, fundamentalists, transhumanists, algorithmicians: in this book Roberto Calasso considers the tribes that inhabit and inform the world today. A world that feels more elusive than ever before.This book, the ninth part of a work in progress, is a meditation on the obscure and ubiquitous process of transformation happening in societies today, where distant echoes of Auden's The Age of Anxiety give way to something altogether more uns...

A meditation on the rise of nationalism and totalitarianism in the contemporary world, by the author of The Ruin of Kasch.The ninth part of Roberto Calasso's masterwork, The Unnamable Present, is closely connected with themes of the first book, The Ruin of Kasch. But while Kasch is an enlightened exploration of modernity, The Unnamable Present propels us into the twenty first century.Tourists, terrorists, secularis...

'Beautiful, intellectually thrilling . . . unlike anything else' TelegraphPromise and separation. Grace and guilt. The chosen and the damned. Roberto Calasso's captivating retelling of key stories from the bible evokes the dramatic world of the Old Testament and casts one of the founding texts of Western civilization in an astonishing - and disquieting - new light.The Book of All Books is the culmination of a lifetime's work and the tenth ...

Roberto Calasso is one of the most original and acclaimed of writers on literature, art, culture and mythology. In Baudelaire's Folly, Calasso turns his attention to the poets and writers of Paris in the nineteenth century who created what was later called 'the Modern.' His protagonist is Charles Baudelaire: poet of nerves, art lover, pioneering critic, man about Paris, whose groundbreaking works on modern culture described the ephemeral, fleeting nature of life in the metropolis ...