Each disparate object described in this book-a Caspar David Friedrich painting, a species of tiger, a villa in Rome, a Greek love poem, an island in the Pacific-shares a common fate: it no longer exists, except as the dead end of a paper trail. Recalling the works of W. G. Sebald, Bruce Chatwin, or Rebecca Solnit, An Inventory of Losses is a beautiful evocation of twelve specific treasures that have been lost to the world forever, and, taken as a whole, opens mesmerizing new vistas of how we can think about extinction and loss.
With meticulous research and a vivid awareness of why we should care about these losses, Judith Schalansky, the acclaimed author of Atlas of Remote Islands, lets these objects speak for themselves: she ventriloquizes the tone of other sources, burrows into the language of contemporaneous accounts, and deeply interrogates the very notion of memory.
- ISBN10 0811229637
- ISBN13 9780811229630
- Publish Date 8 January 2021 (first published 20 August 2020)
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 20 October 2021
- Publish Country US
- Imprint New Directions Publishing Corporation
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 224
- Language English