.

Switched from Kaufmann to Common trans. Prefer Common.

No doubt a tremendous influence on the painting styles of the 43rd President of the United States.

Von Sternbergian humiliation and desire; from behind a puce velvet curtain. Meanwhile a war which was always intended as no more than cultural boxing vortexes wildly into something more grandiose. Internal prose-poem as efficient and taut as 35mm film.

A huge codex of human sickness, drama and dreams.

A terrifying Davosian blueprint for the world of today, and of other worlds which existed since 1924.

Thomas Mann's clairvoyance is unsettling.

May be the greatest of them all.

Eyewatering procession of modes and means of torture throughout world history, written by an author from the 1930s with a surprisingly modern and radical perspective; he deplores animal torture as much as human, and justifiably criticises bullfights, halal/kosher slaughter and circuses as belonging to the past in the same way the stocks, the rack and the scavenger's daughter do. Interspersed with some incredibly evocative primary source material (the depiction of the auto-da-fe of a French priest, of the Piedmont atrocities and of the Holy Inquisition's sex dungeon were grotesquely fascinating), it serves as a reminder that brutal, violent and highly creative torture is, in fact, part of what might be considered normal and expected human behaviour, and that we are fortunate in the West, at least, to live in times when such acts are not condoned by the authorities. A canonical text for those interested in the dark truths of the human psyche; and written in the considered, precise and largely uncensored English of 1930s Great Britain, perhaps the most pleasing era for written English. Plentiful illustrations of people going about their torturous deeds.

Wonderful John Ciardi translation, elegant and meaty. Notes are speculative and interesting, much better than the Mark Musa version.

Abandoned p 100

Mighty.