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World Lit: Books in Translation
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Start giftingUnder the Sign of Saturn
Essays
Narrator
Tavia Gilbert
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Length
6 hours 9 minutes
Language
English
Sontag’s most important critical writings from 1972 to 1980 are collected in Under the Sign of Saturn. One of America’s leading essayists, Sontag’s writings are commentaries on the relation between moral and aesthetic ideas, discussing the works of Antonin Artaud, Leni Riefenstahl, Elias Canetti, Walter Benjamin, and others.
The collection includes a variety of her well-known essays. In “Fascinating Fascism,” Sontag eviscerates Leni Riefenstahl’s attempts to rehabilitate her image after working for Adolf Hitler on propaganda films during World War II. “Approaching Artaud” reflects on the work and influence of french actor, director, and writer Antonin Artaud. The title essay is a study of the life and temperament of Walter Benjamin, who Sontag describes as a sad and lonesome man. The book also includes the essays “On Paul Goodman,” “Syberberg’s Hitler,” “Remembering Barthes,” and “Mind as Passion”.
Susan Sontag’s writings are famously full of intellectual range and depth, and are at turns exhilarating, ominous, disturbing, and beautiful. Under the Sign of Saturn manages to touch on all of these notes and more.
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) was born in Manhattan and studied at the universities of Chicago, Harvard, and Oxford. She is the author of four novels, a collection of stories, several plays, and six books of essays, among them Against Interpretation and On Photography. Her books are translated into thirty-two languages. In 2001 she was awarded the Jerusalem Prize for the body of her work, and in 2003 she received the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature and the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade.
Tavia Gilbert has recorded hundreds of titles across a wide span of genres, including Erica Spindler romantic thrillers, John Scalzi science fiction, Jeaniene Frost fantasy. She received four Audies nominations and won three Audiofile Earphones Awards for titles The Obituary Writer, Sing Them Home and The Day of the Pelican. In addition to voice acting, Gilbert is an accomplished producer, singer and theater actor.
Reviews
“No one has written more passionately about Antonin Artaud….Nor has anyone before Sontag taken the pains to demolish so thoroughly Hitler’s favorite moviemaker, Leni Riefenstahl.”
“In this collection, Sontag masters all she chooses to survey.”
“Attending to the more provocative issues of the day, Sontag has created a body of work of exemplary merit.”
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