Essais & Culture

'A brilliant and luminous writer' MADELINE MILLER, author of THE SONG OF ACHILLES and CIRCETheirs was a love that defied the gods...GLOWING READER REVIEWS'A beautiful story about the power of autonomy' ????? 'Heart-wrenching, hard-hitting, beautifully written, sumptuous, poetic, romantic, and (because Eros is the goddess of desire) utterly scorching in places' ????? 'A gorgeous retelling, and one I will no doubt read again! ????? 'Overall, stunning prose, incredible chemistry, gorgeous characters, just a beauty of a retelling!' ????? 'I cannot tell you how much I loved this, there will never be enough words to describe how much I enjoyed the experience of reading this (and believe me there were many tears involved)' ????? Young, headstrong Psyche has captured the eye of every suitor with her beauty - but also, unfortunately, the jealous gaze of the goddess Aphrodite. As punishment, Psyche is tied to a rock to be sacrificed to a 'monstrous husband'. And yet, no monster arrives: instead, she is spirited away by Aphrodite's daughter Eros.Eros, goddess of desire, can change gender at will.

And in her hidden palace, she visits her bride under the cloak of darkness: Psyche is forbidden to gaze upon the face of her lover. But as they explore each other's bodies and discover new pleasures, Psyche is tempted to break her vow... even if it brings down the wrath of the gods.A gloriously anarchic and seductive retelling of the myth of Psyche and Eros, groundbreaking, gender-fluid and hugely enjoyable, this is a masterpiece from Caro De Robertis, a writer described by Madeline Miller as 'brilliant and luminous'.

Since I too have agonized over trying to decipher the meaning of the Parthenon Frieze, I believe that I am allowed to repeat something that I supported some time ago: that the reexamination of a subject so labyrinthine and bibliographically lumbered has to be dealt with as an intellectual debt, the satisfaction of which will justify all future corrective approaches. However, the anticipated reevaluations of perhaps the most important artistic creation of Periclean times will be fruitful and forward-looking only to the degree that they will draw cognitive powers from a fundamental text by Luigi Beschi. With the republication of that text, in a free-standing format, I am sure that all the new interpretative attempts by modern scholars will be inspired by the intellectual stimuli and values of an unrepeatable scientific ethos. Angelos Delivorrias

In his new book, perhaps the most cogent expression of his mature thought, Jean Baudrillard turns detective in order to investigate a crime which he hopes may yet be solved: the “murder” of reality. To solve the crime would be to unravel the social and technological processes by which reality has quite simply vanished under the deadly glare of media “real time.” But Baudrillard is not merely intending to lament the disappearance of the real, an occurrence he recently described as “the most important event of modern history,” nor even to meditate upon the paradoxes of reality and illusion, truth and its masks. The Perfect Crime is also the work of a great moraliste: a penetrating examination of vital aspects of the social, political and cultural life of the “advanced democracies” in the (very) late twentieth century. Where critics like McLuhan once exposed the alienating consequences of “the medium,” Baudrillard lays bare the depredatory effects of an oppressive transparency on our social lives, of a relentless positivity on our critical faculties, and of a withering ‘high definition’ on our very sense of reality.

In 1991, before an election they did not expect to win, the Conservative government made a fateful decision to privatize the railways. As a result, the taxpayer subsidizes rail more lavishly then ever before. In The Permanent Way, David Hare, working with actors from the Out of Joint Company, tells the intricate, madcap story of a dream gone sour, by gathering together the first-hand accounts of those most intimately involved - from every level of the system.

Tattooing is an ancient practice with profound religious and cultural significance. While western tattooing centres on three main traditions - Polynesian, Japanese and Euro-American -- it has been recorded more or less everywhere. Beginning with the birth of the tattoo, John Miller explores this unique expression of personal, cultural and national identity, the tension between tattoo's status as a fashion item and its roots in subculture, and the relevance of magic -- a crucial part of tattooing's origins -- in contemporary society. As the inherent shock factor of tattoos decreases, tattoos are becoming more extensive, public and challenging in response, prompting an upsurge in avant-garde tattoo projects and 'extreme' tattooing. The Philosophy of Tattoos investigates the innate human desire to mark the skin, and what tattooing might tell us about that obsessively asked question: what does it mean to be human?

Zen Buddhism is a form of Mahayana Buddhism that originated in China and is strongly focused on meditation. It is characteristically sceptical towards language and distrustful of conceptual thought, which explains why Zen Buddhist sayings are so enigmatic and succinct. But despite Zen Buddhism's hostility towards theory and discourse, it is possible to reflect philosophically on Zen Buddhism and bring out its philosophical insights. In this short book, Byung-Chul Han seeks to unfold the philosophical force inherent in Zen Buddhism, delving into the foundations of Far Eastern thought to which Zen Buddhism is indebted. Han does this comparatively by confronting and contrasting the insights of Zen Buddhism with the philosophies of Plato, Leibniz, Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Heidegger and others, showing that Zen Buddhism and Western philosophy have very different ways of understanding religion, subjectivity, emptiness, friendliness and death. This important work by one of the most widely read philosophers and cultural theorists of our time will be of great value to anyone interested in comparative philosophy and religion.

Over the past decades there has been something of a revolution in the way we view classical drama generally and Euripides in particular. This book, updated in a second edition, reflects that revolution and aims to show how Euripides was continually reinventing himself. A truly Protean figure, he seems to set out on a new journey in each of his surviving 19 plays. Between general introduction and final summary, Morwood's chapters identify the themes that underlie the plays and concentrate, above all, on demonstrating the extraordinary diversity of this great dramatist. New to this edition, which is updated throughout, are further details on the individual plays and extra suggestions for background reading. The volume is a companion to The Plays of Sophocles and The Plays of Aeschylus (both by Alex Garvie) also available in second editions from Bloomsbury. A further essential guide to the themes and context of ancient Greek tragedy may be found in Laura Swift's new introductory volume, Greek Tragedy.

Beloved and contemplated by philosophers, architects, writers, and literary theorists alike, Bachelard's lyrical, landmark work examines the places in which we place our conscious and unconscious thoughts and guides us through a stream of cerebral meditations on poetry, art, and the blooming of consciousness itself.

Houses and rooms; cellars and attics; drawers, chests and wardrobes; nests and shells; nooks and corners: no space is too vast or too small to be filled by our thoughts and our reveries.

With an introduction by acclaimed philosopher Richard Kearney and a foreword by author Mark Z. Danielewski.

Travellers, poets, artists, even scholars, still go to Greece in search of something they feel that no other land quite offers them. Partly no doubt this is a by-product of the enormous prestige the world of ancient Greece acquired subsequent to the Renaissance; partly, too, it is due to the sheer physical beauty with which Greece presents one at practically every step. Even though the stereotype of classical Greece has now worn thin, and island after island, seashore village after seashore village, are overrun by the life-starved fugitives from the industrial wildernesses of northern Europe, loosed upon them week-in week-out by the seemingly endless succession of package-tours and charter-flights, the spell and the compulsion survive. For Philip Sherrard the enigma of Greece was a lifelong preoccupation. In this anthology, one of his earlier publications, he explores its various aspects through the writings of those who over the centuries have found in Greece not simply an object of study or a romantic haven, but a challenge, an incitement and a reciprocity that has stirred the wellsprings of both heart and imagination. To give an inner coherence to this exploration the passages chosen are presented in the form of an itinerary that includes all the major areas of Greece, the Aegean Islands and Crete. The remarkably evocative photographs by Dimitri complement this itinerary, providing the visual component of an image which cannot but enrich the experience of all who, for whatever reasons, have set out on this journey of self-discovery that Greece offers them. 'Balance — that is a difficult quality in speaking of a country one cares about, and I don't mean the old tag about nothing too much; for Greece everything is not enough. I mean the balance in accepting the extremes . . . And balance, the whole Greece, is what Mr Sherrard is after in this splendid anthology. Seferis and Sikelianos; Kevin Andrews' description of climbing Olympus; Patrick Leigh Fermor's passage on light; Flaubert fording the Alpheus; Robert Curzon enjoying an Athonite hermit's hospitality; poets, historians, travellers ironic, travellers intoxicated by their own emotions: a hundred scenes, a hundred reactions. . . . I am sometimes asked to recommend books about Greece. I should advise, then, reading The Pursuit of Greece not before but after a first visit — or during a second, when the noble or the lively writing will, as it were, bring out the scent of the country.' Dilys Powell in The Sunday Times. The Pursuit of Greece is a reprint of the 1964 London (John Murray) edition.