The Book of All Books

Roberto Calasso

Nov 2022 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Al Kessel

About this audiobook

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 many figures of the Bible and its whole outline emerge in a new light: one that is often astonishing and disquieting, as indeed is the book-more so than any other-from which they originate.

About the author

Roberto Calasso (1941-2021) was born in Florence, and lived in Milan. Begun in 1983 with The Ruin of Kasch, his landmark series now comprises The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, Ka, K., Tiepolo Pink, La Folie Baudelaire, Ardor, The Celestial Hunter, The Unnamable Present, The Book of All Books, and The Tablet of Destinies.

Al Kessel is a full-time narrator and voice actor currently living in Arizona, where he works from his professional home recording studio.

Tim Parks is the author of many novels, translations, and works of nonfiction, including Out of My Head: On the Trail of Consciousness and Italian Life: A Modern Fable of Loyalty and Betrayal.