Decoding 'the ancient electrical system that is our mind': the cosmic chutzpah of Roberto Calasso

The result is a strange running work that Calasso referred to simply as his “opera”: an untitled sequence of 11 books published over four decades, and dedicated to turning over the oldest substrata of human myth and history in search of how and why we are wired the way we are. The penultimate entry in the opera (the last is due out in English next year), The Book of All Books continues the search with what might be billed as a retelling of the Hebrew Old Testament, treated as only Calasso could treat it.

Retelling might be a misleading term, especially in the midst of the vogue for digestibly repackaged ancient myth. This is neither a handy guide to half-remembered stories from distant RE lessons nor a set of tales retold with modern mores in mind. Yes, there is narrative here, and much of what is most enjoyable in The Book of All Books consists in it, but narrative is not the point. What is really going on is a sustained work of human mental archaeology that has over the course of Calasso’s life subsumed sources of every origin and era – from ancient Greece, India, Africa and Mesopotamia.