Book launch: Turning Away by Benjamin A. Saltzman

A sweeping account of how we are at our most human when we turn away from the pains of the world. This is a work of breathtaking scholarship.

We are delighted to welcome its author, Benjamin A. Saltzman, to Housmans for its UK launch. He will be in conversation with Revd Dr Ayla Lepine.

Why do we look away from the suffering of others? Why do we cover our faces in shame? Why do we lower our heads in grief? Few gestures are as universal as the averted gaze. Fewer still are as ambivalent and inscrutable.

In this incisive study, Benjamin A. Saltzman reveals how the kaleidoscopic appearance of these gestures in art, poetry, and philosophy has turned them into an essential language for our uncomfortable engagements with the world, challenging us to reflect on the ways we fundamentally relate to others.

Turning Away sets out from five influential scenes in which figures avert their gaze: Timanthes’s Sacrifice of Iphigenia, Plato’s Republic, Augustine’s Confessions, Christ’s Crucifixion, and the Fall and Expulsion of Adam and Eve. The gestures of aversion in these scenes refract across visual media, through philosophy and politics, into modernity and the present day, having been reimagined by thinkers like Hannah Arendt, artists like Marc Chagall and Salvador Dalí, poets like Langston Hughes, and many others.

As always, tickets are priced on a sliding scale. If you are unable to pay for a ticket please contact shop@housmans.com for a free ticket. If you choose ‘book + entry’ your copy will be available to collect on the evening. For early collection or delivery contact shop@housmans.com (postage £2.95). Telephone 020 7837 4473.

Doors open 18:45, event starts 19:00.