In this lavishly illustrated book, Calasso turns his attention to the poets and writers of Paris in the 19th century who created what was later called 'the modern'. His protagonist is Charles Baudelaire: poet of nerves, art lover, pioneering critic, man about Paris. With Baudelaire's critical intelligence as his inspiration, Calasso ranges through his life and work, focusing on the painters - Ingres and Delacroix - about whom Baudelaire writes acutely, and then turns to Degas and Manet, who followed in the tracks Baudelaire laid down in his great essay 'The Painter of Modern Life'.

Roberto Calasso provides a meditation on the ancient wisdom of the 'Vedas', bringing ritual, sacrifice and myth to bear on the modern world.

All the books published by a certain publisher could be seen as links in a single chain. In this book, the author meditates on the art of book publishing. It looks at the publishing industry as a whole, from the essential importance of graphics, jackets and cover flaps to the consequences of universal digitization.

'It will be read and re-read not as a treatise but as a story: one of the most extraordinary that has ever been written of the origins of Western self-consciousness' Simon Schama The marriage of Cadmus and Harmony was the last time the gods of Olympus feasted alongside mortals. What happened in the distant ages preceding it, and in the generations that followed, form the timeless tales of ancient Greek mythology. In this masterful retelling of the myths we think we know, Roberto Calasso illuminates the deepest questions of our existence. 'The kind of book one comes across only...

'To read Ka is to experience a giddy invasion of stories - brilliant, enigmatic, troubling, outrageous, erotic, beautiful' The New York Times 'Who?' - or 'ka' - is the question that runs through Roberto Calasso's retelling of the stories of the minds and gods of India; the primordial question that continues to haunt human existence. From the Rigveda to the Upanishads, the Mahabharata to the life of Buddha, this book delves into the corpus of classical Sanskrit literature to re-imagine the ancient Indian myths and how they resonate through space and time. 'The very best book about...

What are Kafka's stories about? Are they dreams? Allegories? Symbols? Things that happen every day? But where and when? In this remarkable book, Roberto Calasso sets out not to dispel the mystery but to let it be illuminated by its own light. With his unique vision, imagination, and intellectual acumen, Calasso attempts to enter the flow, the tortuous movement, the physiology of the stories to discover what they are meant to signify and to delve into the most basic question: Who is K.?