What is at stake in literature? Can we identify the fire that our stories have lost, but that they strive, at all costs, to rediscover? And what is the philosopher's stone that writers, with the passion of alchemists, struggle to forge in their word furnaces? For Giorgio Agamben, who suggests that the parable is the secret model of all narrative, every act of creation tenaciously resists creation, thereby giving each work its strength and grace. The ten essays brought together here cover works by figures ranging from Aristotle to Paul Klee and illustrate what urgently drives Agamben's current research. As is often the case with his writings, their especial focus is the mystery of literature, of reading and writing, and of language as a laboratory for conceiving an ethico-political perspective that places us beyond sovereign power.

Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben is the rare writer whose ideas and works have a broad appeal across many fields, and his devoted fans are not just philosophers, but readers of political and legal theory, sociology, and literary criticism as well. Agamben's intuition and meditation are fascinating, and not least when he turns his critical eye to the mysteries and contradictions of early religion. The "Unspeakable Girl: The Myth and Mystery of Kore" is a book of three richly detailed treatments of the myth of Kore. Kore, also called Persephone and referred to poetically by the Greeks as "the unspeakable girl," was the daughter of Demeter and Zeus who was abducted by Hades and made queen of the netherworld. Kore and her story gave rise to a mysterious cult at Eleusis, the site of the well where Demeter mourned her lost daughter. This book opens with an innovative and insightful essay that focuses on the mysterious indeterminacy of the figure of Kore/Persephone - at once a woman and a girl, a virgin and a mother - as well as the attendant divisions of speech and silence, the sacred and the profane, the animal and the human, and the mortal and the divine. Tracing these dichotomies, Agamben is in top form, able to articulate paradoxes that in another writer's hands might be ineffable. In the second and third parts of the book the reader is treated to a series of beautiful paintings by acclaimed artist Monica Ferrando, as well as her translation of crucial Greek and Latin source materials. As a whole, "The Unspeakable Girl" will not only be welcomed by Agamben's many readers across the disciplines, but also by enthusiasts of classical mythology in general.

Giorgio Agamben is a philosopher well known for his brilliance and erudition, as well as for the difficulty and diversity of his seventeen books. The interest which his "Homo Sacer" sparked in America is likely to continue to grow for a great many years to come. "Giorgio Agamben: A Critical Introduction" presents the complexity and continuity of Agamben's philosophy--and does so for two separate and distinct audiences. It attempts to provide readers possessing little or no familiarity with Agamben's writings with points of entry for exploring them. For those already well acquainted with Agamben's thought, it offers a critical analysis of the achievements that have marked it.