Das Nahe und das Ferne

At the age of eighty, one of the most influential intellectuals of the 20th century agreed to give an interview, his first interview in nearly thirty years. "An event," Le Figaro cheered. In conversation with best-selling author Didier Eribon, Claude Lévi-Strauss looks back on the stages of his life and work - early readings of Freud and Marx, his flight to New York, friendships with André Breton and Max Ernst, his critique of colonialism and Cartesianism, his ongoing struggle for a radical humanism. And again and again it becomes clear that historical events influenced Lévi-Strauss's destiny as much as he influenced the thinking of our epoch. But private reflections are not neglected in these conversations either. Impressively he tells of his love for music, painting, flowers, and why he, the great ethnol.