Ka: Stories of the Mind and Gods of India [Paperback]

Roberto Calasso (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 2, 1999

"A giddy invasion of stories--brilliant, enigmatic, troubling, outrageous, erotic, beautiful." --The New York Times Book Review

"So brilliant that you can't look at it anymore--and you can't look at anything else. . . . No one will read it without reward."
--The Boston Globe

With the same narrative fecundity and imaginative sympathy he brought to his acclaimed retelling of the Greek myths, Roberto Calasso plunges Western readers into the mind of ancient India. He begins with a mystery: Why is the most important god in the Rg Veda, the oldest of India's sacred texts, known by a secret name--"Ka," or Who?
    What ensues is not an explanation, but an unveiling. Here are the stories of the creation of mind and matter; of the origin of Death, of the first sexual union and the first parricide. We learn why Siva must carry his father's skull, why snakes have forked tongues, and why, as part of a certain sacrifice, the king's wife must copulate with a dead horse. A tour de force of scholarship and seduction, Ka is irresistible.

"Passage[s] of such ecstatic insight and cross-cultural synthesis--simply, of such beauty."  --The New York Review of Books

"All is spectacle and delight, and tiny mirrors reflecting human foibles are set into the weave,turning this retelling into the stuff of literature." --The New Yorker

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The very best book about Hindu mythology that anyone has ever written...A magnificent reading of Hindu texts. Its power arises in part through strong, vivid writing and in part through stunning, unexpected metaphors."
--Wendy Doniger, The New Republic

"Magnificent...A moving, exhillarating, extraordinary book...An astonishing synthesis of myths and legends, philosophical inquiry, and speculative narrative"
--Shashi Tharoor, Washington Post Book World

"A scintillatingly challenging book...Its opening sentences are as startling as any in all of literature."
--Thomas McGonigle, Los Angeles Times

"All is spectacle and delight, and -tiny mirrors reflecting human foibles are set into the weave, turning this retelling into the stuff of literature...Calasso's erudition and his capacity for invention appear to be limitless."        
--The New Yorker

"To read Ka is to experience a giddy invasion of stories--brilliant, enigmatic, troubling, outrageous, erotic, beautiful."
--Sunil Khilnani, New York Times Book Review

"A buoyant, expansive narrative that captures, with earthy vigor, scrupulous scholarship, and epic breadth, the Indian cultural ethos."
-- Kirkus Reviews

"This riveting performance (rendered beautifully into English by Tim Parks) is the fruit of a union
between serious scholarship and a mercurial imagination."
--Donna Seaman, Booklist

"Calasso has certainly managed to open a new road through the old landscape of literature."
--John Banville, New York Review of Books


From the Hardcover edition.

About the Author

Roberto Calasso lives in Milan, Italy.

Product Details

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (November 2, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679775471
• ISBN-13: 978-0679775478
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 1 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #74,135 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Incredible for all interested in Hinduism, August 16, 2002

By 

S. Patel "sajioblo" (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ka: Stories of the Mind and Gods of India (Paperback)

I cannot understand why anyone would give this book a single star. Having grown up Hindu, I can say that Calasso has given me a retelling of stories from my childhood, and given my valuable insights into those stories.

The book is as much a history as it is a novel. It is the history of Indian thought told as a story would be, and with each step Calasso gives us another beautiful conclusion or observation.

If there was one part of the book that was flawed, it was the drawn out story of the horse sacrifice, but even there we see how much research Calasso has done.

There are benefits to being somone in a culture and writing on it, but there are also benefits to being an outsider. Calasso is one of the best writers on the outside of India. Not only do we see the linkings of Hinduism, we see the linkings of Calasso's mind, and this linking of facts and memes is a major theme of the faith that Calasso presents. The way this book echoes itself is beautiful.

In truth, as one critic said, nothing has come out of India that deals with Hinduism so wonderfully in recent years. This simply is the truth, and rather than an insult I think Hindus should read this book and accept the challenge to produce a better work.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Oh, my, November 21, 2002

By 

"dgoldste18" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ka: Stories of the Mind and Gods of India (Paperback)

Calasso's works tend to be illuminating and humbling in equal portions, and this is no exception. If you've read any of the ancient stories in more traditional forms -- Hamilton's mythology, or a translation of the Bhagvad-gita for example, you're in for a big surpise. Get ready. And if you think of yourself as reasonably well read, Calasso will make you feel illiterate. This man seems to have read, and digested everything.

In this work, Calasso illustrates the religious thought of India through a retelling of many stories. It might be more fair to say reimaging, but I'd hate to mislead you into thinking this is some sort of postmodernist 'recontextualizing' of the stories. Calasso's not trying to subvert the stories, but rather to get inside them. The reader ends up with intuitions, and a sense of complex relationships, rather than a reductionist or reconstructed version of the tales.

If you're more familiar with western traditions, I recommend "The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony" as an introduction to his technique. But if you're interested in the people and culture of India but have found the other works either too archaic or new-agey, this is a great introduction.

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not a beginner book, May 19, 2003

By 

Ashwin (Bangalore, India) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ka: Stories of the Mind and Gods of India (Paperback)

Ka is well written and is a true pleasure to read. It brings out some of the lesser known mythological tales of India's heritage and is very narrative in its story telling, unlike many Indian authored books on the same subject, which are riddled with commentaries and sanskrit verses in between. This makes the book very readable indeed, which is an added benefit to some very enjoyable and enthralling tales.
However, this is not a beginner book in Indian mythology. To make sense and perspective of the stories in this book, it is very useful to first have a clear idea of the present day view of many of these Gods and the rituals, and also understand India's heritage as being a mix of the Vedic Aryans and the Upanishadic Indians... or if you believe in the Aryan Invasion myth, the Vedic Aryans, period.
This is a good book to read, but needs to have a pre-course work done to avoid drawing "incorrect" subjective judgments on Indian deities from this book alone.