Marble, Mercury, Mist

It begins not with the white of a blank piece of paper but of a block of stone, a 17-tonne monster of solid marble. Months after a fateful encounter with this stone on a ferry off the coast of the island of Thassos, Judith Schalansky finds herself unable to forget it, following it down a snow-white trail towards a marble quarry and a sculptor’s studio, through the dark, often violent history of resource extraction and of appropriating the world. A workshop at the Art Academy of Guadalajara turns into a daring and mercurial performance as an apologist for the culture of the book. And the reconstruction of a bygone ascent of the usually mist-shrouded Brocken mountain crystallises into an encyclopaedia of intransparency that seeks the illuminating in the uncertain.

As always with Judith Schalansky, this new book leaves no stone unturned: it explores the nutritional value of marble pigs, the weight of the Earth, the layout of Noah’s Arc, the authenticity of Lucha libre wrestling, and spectral illusions created in mountain mist – phenomena in which the eeriness and unruliness of reality are reflected and refracted. Her three texts – full of twists and turns that take them back and forth between essay and narrative – explore with playful precision the material conditions of life, of literature, and ultimately, of the author’s own writing.

»Judith Schalansky counters AI with an understanding of the human appropriation of the world that is characterised by the unpredictable. … We can set aside the question of whether the world can be unfurled from every single everyday object. But that its own truth can be found even in this attempt is something her book proves impressively.« Lukas Böckmann, wochentaz

»›Only this much is clear‹, [Schalansky writes], ›in the beginning was not the word, nor light, but mist‹. Hissing vapour. Rarely has it been more beautifully condensed into literature than by Judith Schalansky.« Paul Jandl, Neue Zürcher Zeitung

»A stunning, enchanting book, which makes you happier and smarter.« Katharina Stegelmann, DER SPIEGEL

»The longer you follow Schalansky‘s sentences, the more palpably you sense their impressive rhythm, you admire the movements of her thought and her language, without ever getting the feeling that everything evaporates into mere understanding. … A brilliant book.« Nico Bleutge, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

»What is nature? And how can you write about it? Judith Schalansky provides a prime example here.« Michael Pilz, WELT AM SONNTAG

»Judith Schalansky has written a focused and at the same time light book about how texts arrive at their material. …. This author masters the art of the precise digression. … Going along for the ride is an utter joy.« Beate Meierfrankenfeld, Bayerischer Rundfunk

»This is nature writing without idealising it and prettying it up into precise, poetic images.« René Zipperlen, Badische Zeitung

»Schalansky is a woman of many talents.« SWR

»Impressive. ... Everything is connected with everything else, and you close the covers of this book with this thought in mind, perhaps a little exhausted from so much knowledge and so many realisations.« NDR

»Schalansky turns reams of notes and library catalogues into fantastic prose that balances at the margins of non-fiction and poetry, fact and fiction, enlightenment and myth.« Gerrit Althüser, literaturkritik.de

»If you love an adventure and want to set off into unfamiliar lands, you can find plenty to please you here.« Jörg Magenau, rbb