The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony

The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony

Summary

'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 once or twice in one's lifetime' Joseph Brodsky

'A perfect work like no other' Gore Vidal

Reviews

  • Sensuous, dazzlingly intelligent
    Lucy Hughes-Hallett, Sunday Times

About the author

Roberto Calasso

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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