The Unnamable Present

Author:   Roberto Calasso
Publisher:   Penguin Books Ltd
ISBN:  

9780141988016


Pages:   208
Publication Date:   23 April 2020
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   In stock   Availability explained
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The Unnamable Present


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Overview

A concise, yet wide-ranging inquiry into the roots of modernity and the turmoil of the present day. Tourists, terrorists, secularists, hackers, fundamentalists, transhumanists, algorithmicians- in this book Roberto Calasso considers the tribes that inhabit and inform the world today. A world that feels more elusive than ever before. Yet once contrasted with the period between 1933 and 1945, when the world made a partially successful attempt at self-annihilation, the new millennium begins to take on an unprecedented form. What emerges is something illusory, ever-shifting and occasionally murderous- the unnamable present. This book, the ninth part of a work in progress, is a meditation on the obscure and ubiquitous process of transformation happening in societies today, where distant echoes of Auden's The Age of Anxiety give way to something altogether more unsettling.

Full Product Details

Author:   Roberto Calasso
Publisher:   Penguin Books Ltd
Imprint:   Penguin Books Ltd
Dimensions:   Width: 12.90cm , Height: 1.20cm , Length: 19.80cm
Weight:   0.157kg
ISBN:  

9780141988016


ISBN 10:   0141988010
Pages:   208
Publication Date:   23 April 2020
Audience:   General/trade ,  College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  General ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In stock   Availability explained
We have confirmation that this item is in stock with the supplier. It will be ordered in for you and dispatched immediately.
Language:   English

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Reviews

Surprising, illuminating . . . one of the many pleasures of reading Calasso is to follow the bumper-car ride of his thinking, as he caroms off this and that totemic figure dotted about the intellectual fairground * The New York Times Review of Books * The ninth in Mr. Calasso's kaleidoscopic series of investigations into the spiritual biography of the secular West . . . the two long essays in The Unnamable Present examine the effects of novel and often dangerous mythologies-democracy, nationalism, Darwinism, race theory- in 20th-century Europe . . . he handles the events of the past with the reverence of a priest, rather than the dispassion of a historian. Material facts are the tangible aspect of hidden truths -- Dominic Green * The Wall Street Journal * A public intellectual in the great European tradition, whose new book attempts to define the era we're currently living through * Irish Times * I love Roberto Calasso's writing: it's rigorous, elusive, and expansive. The Unnamable Present continues his austere, zigzagging history of the world, but the difference is that now he's examining the supermodern - and this shift would I guess be a moment for pure celebration, were his conclusions not so inescapable and so terrifying Calasso's erudition is dazzling . . . his assertions come in short, verbless sentences, darting from historical moment to historical moment, alighting on a person, a place, a topic, before moving briskly on * Times Literary Supplement * This slim but wide-ranging philosophical inquiry extends the Italian author's series on the roots of modernity, with particular attention to moral relativism * The New York Times *


This slim but wide-ranging philosophical inquiry extends the Italian author's series on the roots of modernity, with particular attention to moral relativism * The New York Times * Calasso's erudition is dazzling . . . his assertions come in short, verbless sentences, darting from historical moment to historical moment, alighting on a person, a place, a topic, before moving briskly on * Times Literary Supplement * I love Roberto Calasso's writing: it's rigorous, elusive, and expansive. The Unnamable Present continues his austere, zigzagging history of the world, but the difference is that now he's examining the supermodern - and this shift would I guess be a moment for pure celebration, were his conclusions not so inescapable and so terrifying A public intellectual in the great European tradition, whose new book attempts to define the era we're currently living through * Irish Times * The ninth in Mr. Calasso's kaleidoscopic series of investigations into the spiritual biography of the secular West . . . the two long essays in The Unnamable Present examine the effects of novel and often dangerous mythologies-democracy, nationalism, Darwinism, race theory- in 20th-century Europe . . . he handles the events of the past with the reverence of a priest, rather than the dispassion of a historian. Material facts are the tangible aspect of hidden truths -- Dominic Green * The Wall Street Journal * Surprising, illuminating . . . one of the many pleasures of reading Calasso is to follow the bumper-car ride of his thinking, as he caroms off this and that totemic figure dotted about the intellectual fairground * The New York Times Review of Books *


Author Information

Roberto Calasso was born in Florence in 1941. An author and publisher, he began working at Adelphi Edizioni from its founding in 1962 and continued as director for fifty years. The Book of All Books is the tenth part of a series that began with The Ruin of Kasch and includes the international bestseller The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony as well as Ka, K., Tiepolo Pink, La Folie Baudelaire, Ardor, The Celestial Hunter and The Unnamable Present. He died in Milan in 2021.

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