Penguin Books, Summer 2012 - Bookseller Services - Penguin Group

The Prophecies
Nostradamus
Translated with a Foreword and Notes by Richard Sieburth
Introduction by Stéphane Gerson
The mysterious quatrains of the sixteenth-century French
astrologer Nostradamus have long proved captivating for
their predictions. Nostradamus has been credited with
anticipating the Great Fire of London, the rise of Adolf
Hitler, and the September 11 terrorist attacks. Today, as
the world grapples with financial meltdowns, global terrorism,
and environmental disasters—as well as the Mayan
prediction of the apocalypse on December 12, 2012—his
prophecies of doom have assumed heightened relevance.
How has The Prophecies outlasted most books from
the Renaissance? This edition considers its legacy in terms
of the poetics of the quatrains, published here in a brilliant
new translation and with introductory material and
notes mapping the cultural, political, and historical forces
that resonate throughout Nostradamus’s epic, giving it its
visionary power.
nostRAdAMus (1503–1566) was a French doctor, astrologer, and seer
believed to have predicted major world events.
RiChARd sieBuRth is an award-winning translator of works by Henri
Michaux, Michel Leiris, George Büchner, Walter Benjamin, and Friedrich Hölderlin.
His translation for Penguin Classics of Gerard de Nerval’s Selected Writings won
the PEN/Book-of-the-Month-Club Translation Prize. Sieburth teaches French and
comparative literature at New York University.
stéPhAne geRson is an award-winning historian of modern France and
the author of a major cultural history of Nostradamus since the Renaissance. He
teaches French history at New York University.
The world’s final age drawing ever close,
Slow Saturn again making a return:
Empire transferred toward the nation of Brodde,
Vulture plucking out the eye at Narbonne. (3.92)
Tears, shrieks, & moans, vociferation, fright
Inhuman heart, cruel, & blacker than stone:
In Leman & Genoa’s greater isles,
Bloodshed, no wheat to eat, no mercy shown. (6.81)
Now that the Moon for twenty years has reigned,
Seven thousand more shall it last as king:
When the Sun resumes its remaining days
My prophecy’s fulfillment it shall bring. (1.48)
Media Tied to St. Martin’s Press Publication of
Stéphane Gerson’s Nostradamus
National Publicity
Online Publicity
Radio Advertising
Academic Marketing