The Unnamable Present

A meditation on the rise of nationalism and totalitarianism in the contemporary world, by the author of The Ruin of Kasch.

The ninth part of Roberto Calasso’s masterwork, The Unnamable Present, is closely connected with themes of the first book, The Ruin of Kasch. But while Kasch is an enlightened exploration of modernity, The Unnamable Present propels us into the twenty first century.

Tourists, terrorists, secularists, fundamentalists, hackers, transhumanists, algorithmicians: these are all tribes that inhabit the unnamable present and act on its nervous system. This is a world that seems to have no living past, but was foreshadowed in the period between 1933 and 1945, when everything appeared bent on self-annihilation. The Unnamable Present is a meditation on the obscure and ubiquitous process of transformation happening today in all societies, which makes so many previous names either inadequate or misleading or a parody of what they used to mean.

Translated with sensitivity by Calasso’s longtime translator, Richard Dixon, The Unnamable Present is a strikingly original and provocative vision of our times, from the writer The Paris Review called “a literary institution of one.”

Praise for The Unnamable Present

“Calasso is keenly aware of the all-too-namable ills afflicting the contemporary world. His new book differs markedly from its predecessors not only in its brevity but in the urgency with which it addresses the burning issues—the raging inferno—of our time.” —The New York Review of Books