The Lost Books of the Odyssey

(Paperback)

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Description

An extraordinary imagining of episodes, fragments and revisions of Homer's Odyssey, a book destined to become a modern classic. After ten years' journeying Odysseus returns, again and again, to Ithaca. Each time he finds something different- his patient wife Penelope has betrayed him and married; his arrival accelerates time and he watches his family age and die in front of him; he walks into an empty house in ruins; he returns but is so bored he sets sail again to repeat his voyage; he comes back to find Penelope is dead. In these forty-four retellings of passages from Homer's Odyssey, Zachary Mason uses Homer's linear narrative and explodes it- presenting alternative and contradictory fragments of familiar stories - the Trojan Horse, the Cyclops, Circe, the Sirens - allowing us to see Homer's masterpiece afresh. Elegant, provocative and utterly fascinating, The Lost Books of the Odyssey seems destined to become a modern classic.

Reviews

A subtle, inventive and moving meditation on the nature of story and what Louis MacNeice calls 'the drunkenness of things being various' -- John Banville
Dazzling...an ingeniously Borgesian novel that's witty, playful, moving and tirelessly inventive. Mr. Mason has found a supple, lyrical voice in these pages that captures the spirit of the original Odyssey and at the same time feels freshly contemporary...a stunning and hypnotic novel * New York Times *
Spellbinding. In his versions of these ancient myths Mason twists and jinks, renegotiating the journey to Ithaca with all the guile and trickery of Odysseus himself -- Simon Armitage
A small triumph...the invention on display is beguiling...He offers the reader a book of intellectual fireworks that also manages to be wonderfully entertaining * Sunday Times *
Impressive * Guardian *

Author Bio

Zachary Mason is the author of the New York Times bestsellingnovel The Lost Books of the Odyssey and, more recently, Void Star, which has been optioned for film.He lives in California.