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The Ruin of Kasch

The Ruin of Kasch

by Roberto Calasso (Author)

  • Used

    Paperback 1995

    $7.60
Synopsis

Taking as its focus the periods immediately before and after the French Revolution but making occasional sallies backward and forward in time, Roberto Calasso recounts, elucidates, and interprets the downfall of what Baudelaire was already calling 'the Modern'. The downfall came as a sequel to an earlier and opposite collapse: that of archaic societies which were regulated by the movements of the stars and the rituals of sacrifice. At the centre of the work stands the story of Kasch, a legendary African kingdom whose annihilation becomes emblematic of the ruin of the ancient and modern world.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
 Pages: 400
 Edition: New edition
 Publisher: Vintage
Published: 01 Jun 1995
ISBN 10: 0099576317
ISBN 13: 9780099576310
Book Overview: 'The Ruin of Kasch raises more complicated issues, more intelligently, than most historical works; it is keenly argued and seasoned with wit' - Frederick Raphael, Sunday Times

Media Reviews
The Ruin of Kasch takes up two subjects: the first is Talleyrand, and the second is everything else. And everything else includes all the things that have hapened in human history, from the beginning of civilisation until today... It is a book that loves to reveal itself as wandering and vagrant, guided only by fancy and by an insatiable curiosity, constructed of fragments, citations, digressions, anecdotes, and aphorisms - all so that it can be read with nearly continuous pleasure -- Italo Calvino A work charged with intelligence and literary seduction... Profligate in its voices and conversations, this startling, puzzling, profound book yields no take-away thesis; but it lingers in the memory like the aroma of an ancient library New York Times Book Review This is a great, fat, jewel-box of a book, gleaming with obscure treasures -- John Banville Unique, idiosyncratic and vaultingly ambitious... essentail reading -- Michael Dibdin Independent on Sunday Scarcely have readers opened the book when they are not merely interested but fascinated - dazzled in the richest sense of the word...Here is a work that combines erudition, brilliance of style, and intellectual virtuosity to portray the modern era -- Francois Bott Le Monde
Author Bio
Born in Florence, Roberto Calasso lives in Milan, where he is publisher of Adelphi. He is the author of The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, which was the winner of the Prix Veillon and the Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger, Literature and the Gods, Ka and K; and, most recently, Tiepolo Pink.