A brilliant explication of Adorno's distinctive contributions as a philosopher and cultural critic. Allen's focus on cunning dramatically transforms the way we read Adorno's most well-known writings

Caren Irr, Kevy and Hortense Kaiserman Professor in the Humanities, Brandeis University, USA

This is a wide-ranging, scintillating study of the logical and literary forms that sustain much of Adorno's later writing, which Allen persuasively shows to be the philosopher's gamble that thought's self-reflection, shadowed by its mimetic relation to its object, can initiate an alternative dialectic. Allen's meticulous interpretations along the way of texts by Plato, Hegel, Mary Shelley, Kafka, and Beckett are dazzling coruscations of what Adorno called 'exact imagination'.

Henry Pickford, Professor of German Studies and Philosophy, Duke University, USA

A wide-ranging, thoughtful reflection on Adorno's writings, flowing from 'the possibility', as Allen puts it, 'that aesthetic meaning can survive the loss of metaphysical meaning'. Drawing on philosophical and literary sources, Allen sketches a panoramic view of a stark landscape, hostile to life, but which nevertheless makes the latter possible through a renewal of immanent critique.

Iain Macdonald, Professor of Philosophy, Université de Montréal, Canada