Miroslav Holub was both a Czech poet and an immunologist, so his work moves through biology, evolution, history, language and absurdity with this beautiful, quite unique sense of style.

The subjects range from early hominids and laboratory mice to time, consciousness and the habits of scientific institutions; the method is sceptical, comic and free of disciplinary piety. The scientist in him keeps the poet from floating away, while the poet keeps the scientist from pretending facts arrive without metaphor. Edited and translated by David Young, the collection makes a case for intellectual life as a kind of promiscuous attention — knowledge produced by allowing apparently unrelated things to contaminate one another. A strong companion to Holub’s poetry, but equally interesting as a book of essays on how science actually enters culture and thought. 

Faber and Faber, London, 1990. First English edition. Paperback. Light shelf wear and rubbing to covers, with minor edge and corner wear; pages evenly age-toned. Internally clean and unmarked; binding firm. Very good condition.