An Inventory of Losses (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780811229630)

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.

Author: Judith Schalansky
ISBN-10: 0811229637
ISBN-13: 9780811229630
Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
Language: English
Published: 12/08/2020
Pages: 224
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 0.70lbs
Size: 8.00h x 4.90w x 0.90d
Award: National Book Awards - Nominee

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 04/15/2020
Library Journal 06/01/2020 pg. 84
Publishers Weekly 06/08/2020