The Book of All Books
About this ebook
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. From the tale of Saul, who became the first king of a people because his father sent him to search for lost donkeys, to the queen of a remote African realm who traveled three years to ask Jerusalem's king certain questions, to Abraham, who heard the divine command to leave his homeland behind, Calasso traces the reverberations of these stories throughout the Bible's tapestry of separations and promises.
Paralleling in many ways Calasso's earlier work The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, which shed new light on the gods and heroes of Greek myths, The Book of All Books illuminates the figures and themes of the Bible in a startling and thought-provoking new way. Calasso's signature erudition and insight cast fresh perspective on a work that is often shrouded in mystery, revealing unexpected truths that are at once astonishing and disquieting.
About the author
Roberto Calasso (1941–2021) was born in Florence and lived in Milan. Begun in 1983 with The Ruin of Kasch, his landmark series now comprises The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, Ka, K., Tiepolo Pink, La Folie Baudelaire, Ardor, The Celestial Hunter, The Unnamable Present, and The Book of All Books. Calasso also wrote the novel The Impure Fool and eight books of essays: The Forty-Nine Steps, Literature and the Gods, The Madness That Comes from the Nymphs, One Hundred Letters to an Unknown Reader, The Art of the Publisher, The Hieroglyphs of Sir Thomas Browne, The Rule of the Good Neighbor or How to Find an Order for Your Books, and American Allucinations. He was the publisher of Adelphi Edizioni.
Tim Parks is the author of many novels, translations, and works of nonfiction, including Out of My Head: On the Trail of Consciousness and Italian Life: A Modern Fable of Loyalty and Betrayal.
