The Book of All Books
ISBN10: 1250859026
ISBN13: 9781250859020
Trade Paperback
464 Pages
$20.00
CA$27.25
Roberto Calasso’s The Book of All Books is a narration that moves through the Bible as if through a forest, where every branch—every verse—may offer some revelation. Where a man named Saul becomes the first king of a people because his father sent him off to search for some donkeys that had gone astray. Where, in answer to an invitation from Jerusalem’s king, the queen of a remote African realm spends three years leading a long caravan of young men, girls dressed in purple, and animals, and with large quantities of spices, to ask the king certain questions. And where a man named Abraham hears these words from a divine voice: “Go away from your land, from your country and from the house of your father toward the land that I will show you”—words that reverberate throughout the Bible, a story about a separation and a promise followed by many other separations and promises.
The Book of All Books, the tenth part of a series, parallels in many ways the second part, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony. There, gods and heroes of the Greek myths revealed new physiognomies, whereas here the age-old figures and stories of the Bible are illuminated anew.
Reviews
Praise for The Book of All Books
"Moving with confident ease through texts in French, English, Spanish, German, Latin, ancient Greek, Sanskrit and Hebrew (not to mention his native Italian), Calasso is among those rare people, ever diminishing in number, who can persuade you that it is still possible to grasp almost the whole of human culture."—Stephen Greenblatt, The New York Times Book Review
"Beautiful, intellectually thrilling, and possessed of a kind of empyrean wryness that makes it unlike anything else . . . And, thanks in part to the heroic patience and skill of translator Tim Parks, it is often straightforwardly enjoyable and funny."—Tim Smith-Laing, The Telegraph
"Calasso . . . once again muses eloquently on the Bible in this 10th entry in his series dedicated to exploring ancient myths and the human search for meaning . . . Readers with any level of biblical knowledge will benefit from Calasso’s far-ranging insights."—Publishers Weekly
Reviews from Goodreads
BOOK EXCERPTS
Read an Excerpt
I
THE TORAH IN HEAVEN
Nine hundred and seventy-four generations before the world was created, the Torah was written. How? With black fire on white fire. It was Yahweh’s only daughter. Her father wanted her to live in a foreign...