The Prophecies: A Dual-Language Edition with Parallel Text (Penguin Classics)

The first major literary presentation of Nostradamus's Prophecies, newly translated and edited by prizewinning scholars

The mysterious quatrains of the sixteenth-century French astrologer Nostradamus have long proved captivating for their predictions. Nostradamus has been credited with anticipating the Great Fire of London, the rise of Adolf Hitler, and the September 11 terrorist attacks. Today, as the world grapples with financial meltdowns, global terrorism, and environmental disasters—as well as the Mayan prediction of the apocalypse on December 21, 2012—his prophecies of doom have assumed heightened relevance.

How has The Prophecies outlasted most books from the Renaissance? This edition considers its legacy in terms of the poetics of the quatrains, published here in a brilliant new translation and with introductory material and notes mapping the cultural, political, and historical forces that resonate throughout Nostradamus's epic, giving it its visionary power.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Nostradamus (1503–1566) was a French doctor, astrologer, and seer believed to have predicted major world events.

Richard Sieburth (translator) is an award-winning translator of works by Henri Michaux, Michel Leiris, George Büchner, Walter Benjamin, and Friedrich Hölderlin. His translation for Penguin Classics of Gerard de Nerval’s Selected Writings won the PEN/Book-of-the-Month-Club Translation Prize. Sieburth teaches French and comparative literature at New York University.

Stéphane Gerson (introducer) is an award-winning historian of modern France and the author of Nostradamus: How an Obscure Renaissance Astrologer Became the Modern Prophet of Doom. He teaches French history at New York University.