Red Thread Charlotte Higgins Book

Charlotte Higgins is chief culture writer at The Guardian and her previous books include Under Another Sky. This book is about mazes and labyrinths taking its title from the ball of red thread that Ariadne leaves so that Theseus can find and kill the Minotaur. As Higgins notes the labyrinth of that myth is a beautiful, confounding and terrifying building that is one of the foundational symbols of human ingenuity and artistry.

She tracks the origins of the story of the labyrinth back to the poems of Homer, Cantallus, Virgil and Ovid an follows the idea of the labyrinth from the excavations at Knossos to the turf labyrinths of northern Europe and the hedge mazes of Renaissance gardens. The labyrinth in literature and art is also examined through the written works of Borges, George Eliot and Conan Doyle and in the artworks of Titian, Robert Smithson and Eva Hesse.

Like the subject she deals with Higgins' book leads the reader on a strange and intriguing journey, full of unexpected connections and surprising pleasures.

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