Book of All Books

A book that begins before Adam and ends after us. In this magisterial work by the Italian intellectual superstar Roberto Calasso, figures of the Bible and its whole outline emerge in a new light: one that is often astonishing and disquieting, as indeed—more than any other—is the book from which they originate. Roberto Calasso’s The Book of All Books is a narration that moves through the Bible as if through a forest, where every branch—every verse—may offer some revelation. Where a man named Saul becomes the first king of a people because his father sent him off to search for some donkeys that had gone astray. Where, in answer to an invitation from Jerusalem’s king, the queen of a remote African realm spends three years leading a long caravan of young men, girls dressed in purple, and animals, and with large quantities of spices, to ask the king certain questions. And where a man named Abraham hears these words from a divine voice: “Go away from your land, from your country and from the house of your father toward the land that I will show you”—words that reverberate throughout the Bible, a story about a separation and a promise followed by many other separations and promises. The Book of All Books, the tenth part of a series, parallels in many ways the second part, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony. There, gods and heroes of the Greek myths revealed new physiognomies, whereas here the age-old figures and stories of the Bible are illuminated anew.