Farewell to the Horse: The Final Century of Our Relationship

(Paperback)

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Description

A magical, wise and beguiling history of all the ways in which our world has been made by the horse. The relationship between horses and humans is an ancient, profound and complex one. For millennia horses provided the strength and speed that humans lacked. How we travelled, farmed and fought was dictated by the needs of this extraordinary animal. They were sculpted, painted, cherished, admired; they were thrashed, abused and exposed to terrible danger. And then, suddenly, in the 20th century the links were broken and the millions of horses that shared our existence almost vanished. Farewell to the Horse is an engaging, brilliantly written and moving discussion of the endlessly various creature who has so often shared and shaped our fate.

Reviews

A beautiful and thoughtful exploration of the role of the horse in creating our world... lyrical and creative...I very much enjoyed it. Some of the scenes in it will stay with me for a long time to come * James Rebanks *
Intellectual and passionate ... Raulff's material is gloriously diverse ... [a] refined and ambitious book * The Sunday Times *
It becomes evident within three paragraphs that you have never read a book like it ... his writerly pace is exhilarating -- Kate Kellaway * Observer *
Covers ground as rapidly and thrillingly as a Cossack horseman. It lays bare a dizzying network of connections and repeatedly offers unfamiliar approached to old themes * Literary Review *
Sex, violence and 6,000 years of horse power... an elegy to the way horses have galloped through our culture' -- Melanie Reid * The Times *
This is not the Pony Club Manual or a trot through the more familiar sights of equestrian art history; it's Kafka, Aby Warburg, Tolstoy, psychoanalytic theory, Nietzsche and bleak monochrome photos in the style of Sebald. This epic enterprise is relieved by Raulff's spare, vivid style and deep learning -- Susannah Forrest * Literary Review *
A brilliant, entertaining tour-de-force * Die Zeit *
Amazing insights sweep through the book - an entrancing history packed with stories * Neue Zrcher Zeitung *
Great cultural history * Der Tagesspiegel *
Ulrich Raulff is a wonderful storyteller * Sdwestrundfunk *
A fabulous book -- Uli Hufen
An exciting and entertaining ride through various landscapes -- Harry Nutt
Strange and fascinating . . . A sweeping cultural history, more kaleidoscopic than totale, as bibliographical as it is historical . . . Farewell to the Horse is a whirlwind that seems capable of drawing into its vortex almost anyone who ever thought of a horse. -- Verlyn Klinkenborg * New York Review of Books *
A remarkably nimble, creative thinker . . . Raulff's text is somehow dreamy but not sentimental . . . A brilliant examination of our complicated and violently unilateral relationship with Equus caballus . . . Though this book is about horses, it is just as much about thinking as a devotional act. -- C. E. Morgan * New York Times Book Review *

Author Bio

Ulrich Raulff (Author) Ulrich Raulff is Director of the German Literature Archive in Marbach am Neckar. Previously, he was Literary Editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Managing Editor of the S ddeutsche Zeitung. He has written books on Marc Bloch and Aby Warburg and won both the the Anna Kr ger Prize and the Ernst Robert Curtius Prize for Essay Writing. His book on the influence of the German poet Stefan George was awarded the 2010 Leipzig Book Fair Prize.