The Ruin of Kasch
by Roberto Calasso
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A brilliant new translation of a 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 show more 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 center 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. Offered here in a new translation by Richard Dixon, The Ruin of Kasch is, as John Banville wrote, "a great fat jewel-box of a book, gleaming with obscure treasures.". show lessTags
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So there is something worse than a French intellectual.
Africa/Consulate and First Empire, 17/Consulate and First Empire, 1799-1815/Europe - General/Europe - History/Fiction/France/History/History - General History/History: World/Kings and rulers/Revolution, 1789-1799/Archaeology/Europe
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Author Information
43+ Works 6,151 Members
Roberto Calasso is the publisher of Adelphi Edizioni and lives in Milan. The Ruin of Kasch is the first book in an ongoing series that includes The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, Ka, K., Tiepolo Pink, La Folie Baudelaire, and Ardor.
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Awards and Honors
Notable Lists
Series
Belongs to Publisher Series
Gallimard, Folio (3691)
Common Knowledge
- Original title
- La rovina di Kasch
- Original publication date
- 1983
- People/Characters
- Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord
- Important events
- French Revolution (1789)
Classifications
- Genre
- Fiction and Literature
- DDC/MDS
- 853.914 — Literature & rhetoric Italian, Romanian & related literatures Italian fiction 1900- 20th Century 1945-1999
- LCC
- PQ4863 .A3818 .R613 — Language and Literature French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese literatures Italian literature Individual authors, 1961-2000
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 544
- Popularity
- 54,479
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (3.60)
- Languages
- 6 — Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 20
- ASINs
- 7
