“The Ruin of Kasch”: A Night with Roberto Calasso

 

May 10, 2018

For more than three decades, Roberto Calasso—publisher of Italy’s esteemed Adelphi Edizioni—has been composing a multi-volume work-in-progress, the individual parts of which deal with highly diverse subjects, yet are closely interconnected. In exhilarating and original books such as The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, Ka, and K., Calasso has delved into Greek mythology, the work of Franz Kafka, and ancient Hindu lore, among other topics.

Join CIMA and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for a rare opportunity to hear Calasso discuss his work here in the United States, on the occasion of the publication of a new English translation by Richard Dixon of The Ruin of Kasch, the book that launched Calasso’s ambitious series. First published in Italian in 1983, The Ruin of Kasch is one of those rare works that helps us see our entire civilization in a new light. A deep excavation of the history of the French Revolution, with forays backward and forward in time, The Ruin of Kasch is both a labyrinth and a treasure chest, a book about nothing less than the birth of modernity.

Note: This program will feature a conversation between Calasso and author Lila Azam Zanganeh. It is the second of two evenings featuring Roberto Calasso at CIMA. On May 9, Calasso will discuss the writings of Alberto Savinio with Jonathan Galassi, President and Publisher of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, in conjunction with CIMA’s current exhibition.

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Roberto Calasso is the publisher of Adelphi Edizioni, and the author of books such as The Ruin of Kasch, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, Ka, La Folie Baudelaire, The Forty-nine Steps, and The Art of the Publisher, among others. He lives in Milan.

Lila Azam Zanganeh is the author of The Enchanter: Nabokov and Happiness, published in 2011. Azam Zanganeh has taught literature, cinema, and Romance languages at Harvard University, and has contributed articles to The New York Times,  Le Monde, and la Repubblica, and The Paris Review, for which she interviewed Roberto Calasso in 2012. She was born in Paris, and currently divides her time between New York and London.