The End of Ends

In the great tradition of Sterne, Calvino, Kundera and Cervantes - the tradition of dancing playfully on the edge of the abyss of all knowledge - this book by the late great Polish theatre director Tadeusz Bradecki is about nothing less than everything. God, death, theatre, teleology, post-modernism, Marxism, ghosts on stage and off, two millennia of storytelling: it's all here. In honour of the device of the play-within-a-play, it contains vivid verbal restagings. In honour of the tale-within-a-tale, it contains a whole small novel. Because of course it does. Anyone miserable at being marooned on this island of cynical banter and self protective irony should read 'The End of Ends' to be reminded of what it sounds like when art is taken seriously.