Farewell to the Horse

A magical, wise and beguiling history of all the ways in which our world has been made by the horse.The relationship between horses and humans is an ancient, profound and complex one. For millennia horses provided the strength and speed that humans lacked. How we travelled, farmed and fought was dictated by the needs of this extraordinary animal. They were sculpted, painted, cherished, admired; they were thrashed, abused and exposed to terrible danger. And then, suddenly, in the 20th century the links were broken and the millions of horses that shared our existence almost vanished. Farewell to the Horse is an engaging, brilliantly written and moving discussion of the endlessly various creature who has so often shared and shaped our fate.

“A beautiful and thoughtful exploration of the role of the horse in creating our world. It is shocking how recently we relied upon horses, and as this tale is told, shocking how fast we have moved away from our dependant working relationship with them. This fine history book tells the story of that relationship in its final century, and how horses still run through our culture in countless ways, distant echoes of the pact we long had with them. Farewell to the Horse is a grown-up, but also lyrical and creative, history book, and I very much enjoyed it. Some of the scenes in it will stay with me for a long time to come-- James Rebanks Intellectual and passionate ... Raulff's material is gloriously diverse ... [a] refined and ambitious book-- The Sunday Times This unusual book is a series of airy, winging essays that alight briefly on world history, art, literary criticism and historiography before leaping on to make new, often surprising connections. [...] This is not the Pony Club Manual or a trot through the more familiar sights of equestrian art history; it's Kafka, Aby Warburg, Tolstoy, psychoanalytic theory, Nietzsche and bleak monochrome photos in the style of Sebald. This epic enterprise is relieved by Raulff's spare, vivid style and deep learning. He is as comfortable analysing the etymology of Pferd and Ross as he is discussing the Chicago School, Clint Eastwood and the Amazons, and he rarely loses his audience.--Susannah Forrest, Literary Review As you pick up the reins of this books - trying to get a sense of what sort of ride it is to be - it becomes evident within three paragraphs that you have never read a book like it. [...] Raulff's ability to corral scattered equestrians in art, letters and life makes scintillating reading and his writerly pace is exhilarating - especially when he takes flight from his own starting gates--Kate Kellaway, Observer Covers ground as rapidly and thrillingly as a Cossack horseman. It lays bare a dizzying network of connections and repeatedly offers unfamiliar approached to old themes-- Literary Review A brilliant, entertaining tour-de-force-- Die Zeit Amazing insights sweep through the book - an entrancing history packed with stories-- Neue Z”

A beautiful and thoughtful exploration of the role of the horse in creating our world... lyrical and creative...I very much enjoyed it. Some of the scenes in it will stay with me for a long time to come James Rebanks
Intellectual and passionate ... Raulff's material is gloriously diverse ... [a] refined and ambitious book The Sunday Times
It becomes evident within three paragraphs that you have never read a book like it ... his writerly pace is exhilarating -- Kate Kellaway Observer
Covers ground as rapidly and thrillingly as a Cossack horseman. It lays bare a dizzying network of connections and repeatedly offers unfamiliar approached to old themes Literary Review
Sex, violence and 6,000 years of horse power... an elegy to the way horses have galloped through our culture' -- Melanie Reid The Times
This is not the Pony Club Manual or a trot through the more familiar sights of equestrian art history; it's Kafka, Aby Warburg, Tolstoy, psychoanalytic theory, Nietzsche and bleak monochrome photos in the style of Sebald. This epic enterprise is relieved by Raulff's spare, vivid style and deep learning -- Susannah Forrest Literary Review
A brilliant, entertaining tour-de-force Die Zeit
Amazing insights sweep through the book - an entrancing history packed with stories Neue Zürcher Zeitung
Great cultural history Der Tagesspiegel
Ulrich Raulff is a wonderful storyteller Südwestrundfunk
A fabulous book -- Uli Hufen
An exciting and entertaining ride through various landscapes -- Harry Nutt
Strange and fascinating . . . A sweeping cultural history, more kaleidoscopic than totale, as bibliographical as it is historical . . . Farewell to the Horse is a whirlwind that seems capable of drawing into its vortex almost anyone who ever thought of a horse. -- Verlyn Klinkenborg New York Review of Books
A remarkably nimble, creative thinker . . . Raulff's text is somehow dreamy but not sentimental . . . A brilliant examination of our complicated and violently unilateral relationship with Equus caballus . . . Though this book is about horses, it is just as much about thinking as a devotional act. -- C. E. Morgan New York Times Book Review

Ulrich Raulff (Author)Ulrich Raulff is Director of the German Literature Archive in Marbach am Neckar. Previously, he was Literary Editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Managing Editor of the S ddeutsche Zeitung. He has written books on Marc Bloch and Aby Warburg and won both the the Anna Kr ger Prize and the Ernst Robert Curtius Prize for Essay Writing. His book on the influence of the German poet Stefan George was awarded the 2010 Leipzig Book Fair Prize.

This item is eligible for free returns within 30 days of delivery. See our returns policy for further details.