Since 1981, the year of its first publication with Franco Maria Ricci, Codex Seraphinianus, a visual encyclopedia of an unknown world written in an unknown language, has become a cult object worldwide and has fascinated a generation of artists, readers, and critics, generating lengthy debates about its meanings and origin. The book, celebrated as one of the finest contemporary artists’ books, has created derivations and contaminations in all media, from the Web to music and film. Admirers included Roland Barthes (who read it in advance, when it had not yet been published) and Italo Calvino, who called it “The Encyclopedia of a Visionary.”
With the advent of the digital age and new forms of communication, this book has gained even more relevance and uniqueness. For this new edition celebrating the 40th anniversary since its first release, Luigi Serafini has enriched the set of images with seventeen new plates and designed a new packaging for the Deluxe edition poised between an art book and a design object.

The unconscious knows no time or history, but its form and role in people’s lives and society depend on the “psychosphere,” which in each era has its own distinct specificity. In the early twentieth century, Freud identified the unconscious as “the intimate foreign land,” the dark side of the well-ordered structure of progress and rationality. In the 1970s Deleuze and Guattari described the unconscious as a laboratory, a desiring force that ceaselessly produces imagination.

In parallel, the irruption of the virus into the global landscape and the depletion of psychic and physical resources due to aging force the individual and collective unconscious to come to terms with the radical prospect of human extinction. In this exploration of the contradictions of the present Franco Bifo Berardi investigates the third phase of the psychosphere and identifies the challenges that with extreme urgency confront our possibilities for action and our imagination.

Franco Bifo Berardi is among the most important contemporary radical thinkers. His latest books include Heroes. Suicidio e omicidi di massa (Baldini+Castoldi, 2015), Futurabilità (Nero, 2018), Fenomenologia della fine (Nero, 2020), E: la congiunzione (Nero, 2021).

Jungle Nama tells of an ancient legend enshrined in the heart of the Sundarban, the world’s largest mangrove forest. It is the legend of Dokkhin Rai, a terrible spirit who, spreading terror, dictates his savage law and reigns unchallenged over the forest. In the guise of a tiger, he suddenly appears before the unfortunate who dare venture into his realm and devours their bones, skin, and hands.
It is the legend of Bon Bibi and his brother Shah Jongoli, two beings of great power who flock from a distant desert, summoned by the prayers and pleas of jungle creatures in terror. Strong and merciful Bon Bibi, warrior with monstrous energy Sha Jongoli, after a savage struggle the two put an end to Dokkhin Rai’s tyranny, confining him to the mouth of the river, where the water joins the land. Bon Bibi thus imposes his new law, a law born of his sagacity: in the realm of humans no demon shall set foot; at the mouth of the river, however, where Dokkhin Rai will have his fortress, no human shall venture. It is, finally, the legend of Dhona, the merchant known as the Wealthy, who cannot be satisfied with the affluence he has achieved. His greed yearns for a new adventure, a new journey beyond all boundaries and prohibitions.

Amitav Ghosh narrates this magnificent jungle tale by resorting to the magnetic power of verse, beautifully translated in this Italian edition by Norman Gobetti and Anna Nadotti. The result is a valuable book, especially for the younger generation, which, designed by Salman Toor, reawakens the ancient, wise law that has governed the relationship between humans and nature for millennia: the law of Bon Bibi, for which it is good never to challenge the wild heart of nature by bending it to one’s will, if the balance of the earth is to be ensured. Balance that, as the nefarious consequences of ongoing climate change show, is now deeply threatened by the “boundless” activity of humans.

Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta in 1956, studied at Oxford and currently lives between his hometown and New York. Considered “one of India’s greatest writers” (la Repubblica), for Neri Pozza he has published: The Land of the Tides (2005), Incendiary Circumstances (2006), The Palace of Mirrors (2007), Sea of Poppies (2008), The Calcutta Chromosome (2008), The Manuscript Slave (2009), The Shadow Lines (2010), The River of Opium (2011), Deluge of Fire (2015) and The Great Blindness (2017).