Selected as a book of the year 2017 by The Times and Sunday Times
What is it about Adam and Eve’s story that fascinates us?
A
compelling, all-encompassing story of myth, theology and belief ... He delves deftly and lucidly into theology...
FascinatingThrilling … a study of western disenchantment, of intellectual progress, of the fading powers of the myths of a simpler age. But it is a more complex study than that. It is also
an ode to human creativity and to the powerful grip of narrativeFascinatingEnthralling, thrilling… Along the way, there is an often hilarious account of scholastic efforts to rationalise the myth’s illogic, and an array of entertaining heresies… What gives Greenblatt’s “intellectual adventure” its tension and excitement is a sense of his own divided loyalties
Erudite, wide-ranging, thought-provoking and elegantly fashionedGreenblatt, on
excellent form here, visits familiar destinations ... with fresh eyes, and opens up new interpretative vistas ... Hefty themes are covered in this
spellbinding book, but the learning is worn lightly.
This is a learned book, but Greenblatt’s passion for story-telling makes it read like a series of fascinating anecdotes…
The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve is
exhilarating to read and
a feast for the mindGreenblatt is utterly engaging.Greenblatt's inexhaustible curiosity goes without saying; what makes this book a wonder is its passion …
nothing less than a love story, a hymn. Who would have thought scholarship could be so ardent or so poignant?
Pellucid, absorbing and for many contemporary readers surely
definitive account
Stephen Greenblatt is Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. He is the author of twelve books, including The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, which won the National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize, as well as the New York Times bestseller Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare and the classic university text Renaissance Self-Fashioning.
He is General Editor of The Norton Anthology of English Literature and of The Norton Shakespeare, and has edited seven collections of literary criticism.