It's here! Browse the 2024 Penguin Christmas gift guide
The Book of All Books

The Book of All Books

Summary

'Beautiful, intellectually thrilling . . . unlike anything else' Telegraph

Promise and separation. Grace and guilt. The chosen and the damned. Roberto Calasso's captivating retelling of key stories from the bible evokes the dramatic world of the Old Testament and casts one of the founding texts of Western civilization in an astonishing - and disquieting - new light.

The Book of All Books is the culmination of a lifetime's work and the tenth part of a series that began with The Ruin of Kasch.

'Engaging . . . enlightening' Financial Times

'Surprising . . . vivid' Spectator

Reviews

  • Beautiful, intellectually thrilling, and possessed of a kind of empyrean wryness that makes it unlike anything else . . . And, thanks in part to the heroic patience and skill of translator Tim Parks, it is often straightforwardly enjoyable and funny
    Tim Smith-Laing, The Telegraph

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.
Learn More

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more