Description

‘A poetic, erudite exploration of history and myth’ Financial Times

An unforgettable journey through centuries and across cultures to the pivotal moment in evolution – when humans did something that no species had yet tried – when we became the hunter and no longer the prey. Informed by Greek and Egyptian myth, the stories of poets, shamans and gods, Roberto Calasso’s expansive exploration of our relationship to animals and sacrifice, encourages us to reframe our understanding of our place in history, and in the world.

‘Calasso has created a much discussed original genre for these books … a dense pastiche of myth, biography, criticism, philosophy, history and minutiae … woven together by Calasso’s unflagging vision’ The New Yorker

Publisher Review

Beguiling, captivating, vital ... Informed by myth, this damning exploration of man's detachment from the animal world is ninth in a staggeringly learned series -- Stuart Jeffries * Guardian * The Celestial Hunter is an "initiation through the book", speculative but capable of changing how you see things -- Dominic Green * Spectator * A spellbinding modern magus . . . he writes like a poet, not a professor, in glinting, enigmatic nuggets of narrative. At a moment when atavistic kinds of peril, awe and terror seem close at hand, it feels no great stretch to share Calasso's core belief that "the gods always return" -- Boyd Tonkin * Financial Times * Calasso is especially good at describing the characters of myth and legend with a novelist's omniscient authority ... leaves you feeling not out of your depth, but smarter and better read -- A. E. Stallings * New York Times *