The Waterless Sea: A Curious History of Mirages

Author:   Christopher Pinney
Publisher:   Reaktion Books
ISBN:  

9781780239323


Pages:   184
Publication Date:   14 May 2018
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   In stock   Availability explained
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The Waterless Sea: A Curious History of Mirages


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Overview

Mirages have long astonished travellers and beguiled thirsty desert voyagers. Chinese and Japanese poetry and images depicted mirages as the exhalations of clam-monsters. Indian sources related them to the `thirst of gazelles', a metaphor for the futility of desire. From the late eighteenth century to the present, mirages became a symbol of `Oriental despotism', a malign, but also enchanted, emblem. But the mirage motif is rarely simply condemnatory. More commonly it conveys a sense of escape, of fascination, of a desire to be deceived. The Waterless Sea is the first book devoted to the theories and history of mirages. Christopher Pinney navigates a sinuous pathway through a mysterious and evanescent terrain, showing how mirages have impacted politics, culture, science, and religion, and how we can continue to learn from their sublimity.

Full Product Details

Author:   Christopher Pinney
Publisher:   Reaktion Books
Imprint:   Reaktion Books
ISBN:  

9781780239323


ISBN 10:   1780239327
Pages:   184
Publication Date:   14 May 2018
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In stock   Availability explained
We have confirmation that this item is in stock with the supplier. It will be ordered in for you and dispatched immediately.

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Reviews

`This is both a study of the mirage as a subject of scholarship and a profound meditation on its paradoxical form as a true illusion . . . Itself written as if in the style of a mirage, this is a beautifully conceived work that philosophises the visible.'- Faisal Devji, University of Oxford; `An extraordinary tour of the union of refraction and the imagination.'- Jonathan Lamb, Vanderbilt University, Tennessee; Pinney's erudite and highly readable account of the mirage is a scintillating journey through more than just an ephemeral intangibility. It is a substantial history of the sublime as it is refracted on the surface of what remains enchanted, mysterious and strange.'- Omar W. Nasim, University of Regensburg


Author Information

Christopher Pinney is Professor of Anthropology and Visual Culture at University College London. His publications include Camera Indica (1997), Photos of the Gods (2004) and Photography and Anthropology (2011), all published by Reaktion

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