Taking as its focus the periods immediately before and after the French Revolution but making occasional sallies backward and forward in time, Roberto Calasso recounts, elucidates, and interprets the downfall of what Baudelaire was already calling 'the Modern'. The downfall came as a sequel to an earlier and opposite collapse: that of archaic societies which were regulated by the movements of the stars and the rituals of sacrifice. At the centre of the work stands the story of Kasch, a legendary African kingdom whose annihilation becomes emblematic of the ruin of the ancient and modern world.