Adelphi Edizioni was founded in Milan in 1962 by Luciano Foà together with Roberto Bazlen, and started off by publishing the works of Nietzsche, which had previously only been available in underground circuits. That set the tone associated with the company ever since, as well as marking out its resolute approach to publishing, taking in various trends, genres and periods in the sphere of intellectual creation, though always with stringent standards, and ranging in its books from central-European works, as represented by Berberova and Canetti, to Eastern works from China, Tibet and Japan.
After the death of Bazlen, the 21-year-old Roberto Calasso joined Adelphi in 1965. Early in the 1990s, Foà put Calasso in charge of the firm. Roberto Calasso is also internationally known as a celebrated author of novels and essays.
Books from Adelphi are always impeccable in terms of the paper, the printing and the typography, and the same goes for their content. The coherence and good taste of Adelphi Edizioni’s catalogue result in a finely articulated work, one which includes such narrative and stylistic delights