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Pascal Quignard delves into the uncanny bond between recognition and loss, outlining how our earliest experiences shape our longing for a paradise we can never reclaim. What if paradise was not a place we lost, but one we never truly knew? In
Paradisiacs, the fourth volume of the
Last Kingdom series, Pascal Quignard meditates on the nature of paradise--not as an Eden to which we might return, but as a place of origin that lingers in myth. Through his signature blend of ancient texts, Paleolithic art, psychoanalysis, and personal reflection, Quignard explores our primal longing for recognition. He traces this yearning back to the erstwhile, a prenatal paradise from which we are expelled at birth, and examines how resemblance and recognition shape our identities.
At once poetic and philosophical,
Paradisiacs invites readers into Quignard's singular world, where language and history coalesce into a profound rumination on the origins of selfhood. With John Taylor's masterly translation, this latest installment of
Last Kingdom is a hypnotic and revelatory reading experience for those drawn to the intersections of philosophy and the ineffable.
About the author
Pascal Quignard is the author of over sixty titles and is widely regarded as one of the foremost literary French writers today. In 2002, he won France's most prestigious literary prize, the Prix Goncourt for
The Roving Shadows.
John Taylor has translated many key French, Swiss, Italian, and modern Greek writers. His translations include books by Philippe Jaccottet, Georges Perros, Catherine Colomb, and Pierre Chappuis, as well as Pascal Quignard's
The Unsaddled and Dying of Thinking. Taylor is also the author of several books of poetry and poetic prose, including, most recently,
What Comes from the Night.
