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  • Published: 25 July 2019
  • ISBN: 9780141990767
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 464

Ka




A remarkable retelling of Hindu mythology, from one of Europe's greatest literary figures

In Ka, Roberto Calasso delves into the corpus of classical Sanskrit literature recreating and re-imagining the enchanting world of ancient India. Beginning with the Rig-Veda, Ka weaves together myths from the Upanishad, the Mahabharata and the stories of the Buddha, all of which pose questions that have haunted us for millennia.

  • Published: 25 July 2019
  • ISBN: 9780141990767
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 464

About the author

Roberto Calasso

Born in Florence, Roberto Calasso lives in Milan, where he is publisher of Adelphi. He is the author of The Ruin of Kasch, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, which was the winner of the Prix Veillon and the Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger, Literature and the Gods, Ka and K.

Also by Roberto Calasso

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Praise for Ka

If you want a dazzling, complex, erotic and utterly original European novel of ideas, Calasso is your man, and Ka his masterpiece

Sunday Times

To read Ka is to experience a giddy invasion of stories - brilliant, enigmatic, troubling, outrageous, erotic, beautiful ... these stories are superbly narrated

Sunil Khilnani, New York Times Book Review

Passage[s] of such ecstatic insight and cross-cultural synthesis-simply, of such beauty

The New York Review of Books

The very best book about Hindu mythology that anyone has ever written ... A magnificent reading of Hindu texts. Its power arises in part through strong, vivid writing and in part through stunning, unexpected metaphors

Wendy Doniger, The New Republic

Magnificent ... A moving, exhilarating, extraordinary book ... An astonishing synthesis of myths and legends, philosophical inquiry, and speculative narrative

Shashi Tharoor, Washington Post Book World

A scintillatingly challenging book ... Its opening sentences are as startling as any in all of literature

Thomas McGonigle, Los Angeles Times

All is spectacle and delight, and tiny mirrors reflecting human foibles are set into the weave, turning this retelling into the stuff of literature ... Calasso's erudition and his capacity for invention appear to be limitless

The New Yorker