Gigantic academic blunder? The phrase appears without the question-mark on the last page of Centuries of Darkness. That title too, as we shall see, would have better conveyed the book's message if it had ended in a question-mark. Fortunately, though, the message is already brilliantly expressed by the book's dust-jacket, showing the design from the painted box of Tutankhamun in the form of a jigsaw. The jigsaw is divided into two parts by a black intervening gap, yet we can see that the two halves would actually fit together. The gap should not be there.

LRB 25 July 1991 | PDF Download