Author: Lewis Hyde
Publisher: Canongate
Publication Date: 2008 (1997)
Pages: 432
Format: Paperback
Genre: Non-Fiction / Mythology / Culture
Source: Xmas Gift
"Art is a lie that tells the truth." - Pablo Picasso
Picasso disrupted the world around him, and in doing so he reshaped it. That is the Trickster spirit. Playful, mischievous, subversive, amoral. Tricksters are a great bother to have around, but paradoxically they are also indispensable heroes of culture, because our world - with its complexity and ambiguity, its beauty and its dirt - was trickster's creation, and the work is not yet finished.
Authoritative in its scholarship, supple and dynamic in its style, Trickster Makes This World encourages you to think and see afresh. (Goodreads Synopsis)
Trickster Makes This World is a stunning book that offers and insightful and playful look at trickster figures in different mythologies and the role they play, both within their respective myths and in culture in general. Since my own religious beliefs revolve around a trickster god, I found this book particularly enjoyable and intriguing and it made me think about why Loki appeals to me so much. This is non-fiction, but the prose is never stodgy. It is highly readable and offers plenty of humour and wit along the way - as befitting a book about tricksters. Well worth a read for anyone interested in mythology and/or cultural studies.
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