Claude Levi-Strauss: The Bearer of Ashes

Claude Levi-Strauss is one of the intellectual giants of the 20th century, a leading exponent of structuralism and a social anthropologist. Yet he is a very private and isolated figure who has been reticent about himself, and this book provides an insight into Levi-Strauss's character through a careful reading of the more speculative passages of his books and interviews. It is an introduction to Levi-Strauss and his work, which places the world-view of this great French writer in the context of 20th-century intellectuals' struggles to come to grips with cultural relativism and the problem of the primitive.