In the Shape of a Boar

(Paperback)

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Description

In pre-Homeric times, the Greek heroes ' and one heroine ' united one last time to hunt down the ferocious Boar of Kalydon, sent by Artemis to ravage the land. Within the ancient sources lies a darker tale ' one of treachery among the hunters and a destructive love affair

Three and a half millennia later, the hunt for the Boar of Kalydon is re-enacted, and once again re-told. In the final months of the Second World War, Greek partisans pursue their quarry ' an SS officer ' in the same mountains the ancient Boar of Kalydon once roamed. Witness to the hunt is Sol Memel, a young Rumanian-Jewish poet fleeing for his life. Sol has lost his family and abandoned his lover, Ruth. Sol's role in the SS officer's eventual capture and killing inspires him to rewrite the ancient myth as a poem. Die Keilerjagd is acclaimed throughout post-war Europe and Sol is hailed as the voice of a generation. But Die Keilerjagd contains its own secret. When Ruth reappears twenty-five years later and proposes a film based on the writing of the poem, Sol finds himself cast as the quarry in this new telling of the tale. Under the camera's unforgiving lens, the ghosts of Sol's wartime past materialise ' behind them stand the ghosts of ancient Greece, the long-dead heroes who hold the truth behind the story of the original hunt.

Author Bio

Lawrence Norfolk was born in 1963. He won the Somerset Maugham Award for his first novel, Lemprire's Dictionary.