The Ruin Of Kasch

By (author) Calasso Roberto
LBP 1,425,600.00
By (author) Calasso Roberto; Translated by Dixon Richard
Description:

A sparkling new translation of the classic work on violence and revolution as seen through mythology and art

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 statesman Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand, who knew the secrets of the ancien régime and all that came after, and was able to adapt the notion of "legitimacy" to the modern age. Roberto Calasso follows him through a vast gallery of scenes set immediately before and after the French Revolution, making occasional forays backward and forward in time, from Vedic India to the porticoes of the Palais-Royal and to the killing fields of Pol Pot, with appearances by Goethe and Marie Antoinette, Napoleon and Marx, Walter Benjamin and Chateaubriand. At the centre stands the story of the ruin of Kasch, a legendary kingdom based on the ritual killing of the king and emblematic of the ruin of ancient and modern regimes.

''Startling, puzzling, profound . . . a work charged with intelligence and literary seduction'' The New York Times

''Unique, idiosyncratic and vaultingly ambitious... essential reading'' Independent

''A great fat jewel-box of a book, gleaming with obscure treasures'' John Banville


Biographical note:
Roberto Calasso was born in Florence in 1941. An author and publisher, he began working at Adelphi Edizioni from its founding in 1962 and continued as director for fifty years. The Book of All Books is the tenth part of a series that began with The Ruin of Kasch and includes the international bestseller The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony as well as Ka, K., Tiepolo Pink, La Folie Baudelaire, Ardor, The Celestial Hunter and The Unnamable Present. He died in Milan in 2021.
Promotional headline:
A brilliant new translation of a classic work on violence and revolution as seen through mythology and art.
More Information
Author By (author) Calasso Roberto
Date Of Publication Jan 25, 2018
EAN 9780141397016
Contributors Calasso Roberto; Dixon Richard
Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Languages English
Language of Origin Italian
Country of Publication United Kingdom
Width 131 mm
Height 198 mm
Thickness 23 mm
Product Forms Paperback / Softback
Weight 0.312000
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