Ka: Stories of the Mind and Gods of India
by Roberto Calasso
- Used
- Very Good
- Paperback
- Condition
- Very Good
- ISBN 10
- 0679775471
- ISBN 13
- 9780679775478
- Seller
-
Atlanta, Georgia, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
Vintage Books, November 1999. Trade Paperback . Very Good. With the same narrative fecundity he brought to 'The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, ' Calasso plunges Western readers into the consciousness of ancient India.
Reviews
On Apr 23 2014, a reader said:
KA, by the Italian writer Roberto Calasso, is a breathtaking and revelatory book. Calasso had hit the boards running in 1993 with THE MARRIAGE OF CADMUS AND HARMONY, a reimagining of the classic Greek myths; in KA, subtitled “Stories of the Mind and Gods of India,” he dives into the Indic myths and restores to them not only their brutal and erotic power but their mysterious, fluxive, almost vegetative qualities: the stories grow from each other as naturally as a flower from a stalk from a seed, and as startlingly, bafflingly, as the lotus stalk blooms from Vishnu’s belly. The collection of retold myths is usually a rote, schoolbookish genre: plots and characters but stale prose and no manna, no power, no emanations. Calasso is a full-flower European intellectual, and I’ll match any odds you offer that he is familiar with Heinrich Zimmer and Mircea Eliade and all the great twentieth-century mythographers, but that’s all behind the prose; he is also, here, an artist working solely, with an expressive and sensuous style, to render the tale for the tale’s sake: myth as a way of knowledge. He uses the tropical welter of the Vedic myths to envelop us; and when he arrives at the open field of the stories about the Buddha and Ananda he demonstrates how Buddhism grew out of Hinduism with a clarity we feel in our bones. Tim Parks has translated beautifully, not least in the playful cadences that close the book, that lull us back into story and wheel us back around to the book’s beginning. Calasso at the end evokes the hymn to Ka from the Rig Veda, with its teasing, lyric questions: “He who brought forth the great and lucid waters: Who shall we adore with our oblations?” KA—the Sanskrit word for “Who?”—is the book’s question; these stories, from the great and lucid waters of Indic myth, are its myriads of answer.
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Details
- Bookseller
- A Cappella Books (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 324420
- Title
- Ka: Stories of the Mind and Gods of India
- Author
- Roberto Calasso
- Format/Binding
- Trade Paperback
- Book Condition
- Used - Very Good
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Binding
- Paperback
- ISBN 10
- 0679775471
- ISBN 13
- 9780679775478
- Publisher
- Vintage Books
- Place of Publication
- New York, New York, U.s.a.
- Date Published
- November 1999
- Pages
- 447
Terms of Sale
A Cappella Books
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About the Seller
A Cappella Books
Biblio member since 2005
Atlanta, Georgia
About A Cappella Books
https://mailchi.mp/acappellabooks/signed-books-from-online-marketplaces
A Cappella Books is a full service used, new & out-of-print bookstore located in the heart of Atlanta's bohemian district, Little 5 Points, since 1989. We stock a general selection of some 20 to 30, 000 paperbacks & hardcovers, ranging from the common to the quite scarce. Our specialties reflect the personality of our neighborhood and, to varying degrees, our staff. But don't be fooled, we really have something for almost everybody who loves books. Come see us.
A Cappella Books is a full service used, new & out-of-print bookstore located in the heart of Atlanta's bohemian district, Little 5 Points, since 1989. We stock a general selection of some 20 to 30, 000 paperbacks & hardcovers, ranging from the common to the quite scarce. Our specialties reflect the personality of our neighborhood and, to varying degrees, our staff. But don't be fooled, we really have something for almost everybody who loves books. Come see us.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Trade Paperback
- Used to indicate any paperback book that is larger than a mass-market paperback and is often more similar in size to a hardcover...