#whatireadovershabbat Roberto Calasso's The Tablet of Destinies, translated by Tim Parks (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022)
The Tablet of Destinies is a sequel of sorts to the Epic of Gilgamesh. Picking up the thread with Utnapishtim, the undying man, the book is a dialogue between him and Sinbad the Sailor from Arabic folklore. Their topic? The age of order (human prehistory) vs. the age of chance (our own). A vein of mystery has always run through Calasso’s writings, so that it seems the author himself speaks through Utnapishtim, relating stories of gods and heroes, while admitting even he doesn’t know their full meaning. This might be Calasso’s most elliptical work. A gift to long-time readers, yet I suspect bewildering to new ones.
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