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The Lost Books of the Odyssey

A Novel

Paramètres

  • 240pages
  • 9 heures de lecture

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In the plain outside the walls of Troy, Agamemnon demands a fortress. With no materials except a few trees and unlimited sand, the Greeks dig a negative image of a palace into the white plain: a vast, inverted castle soaring into the depths of the earth. 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. Made up of forty-four retellings of passages from Homer's <i>Odyssey</i>, Zachary Mason's book is a fictional apocrypha: a radical and thrilling renovation of Classical legend. He uses Homer's linear narrative and explodes it: presenting fragments of alternative and contradictory re-takes and out-takes of the same familiar stories - the Trojan Horse, the Cyclops, Circe, the Sirens - breaking them up and putting them together into new shapes. Turned inside-out, these stories become glosses, mirrors and mazes that explore and examine Odysseus's journey: allowing us to see it afresh, in all its ambition, sadness and futility. Reminiscent of Borges or the Calvino of <i>Invisible Cities</i>, <i>The Lost Books of the Odyssey</i> is elegant, allusive, provocative and utterly fascinating - and seems destined to become a modern classic.

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The Lost Books of the Odyssey, Zachary Mason, Homér

Langue
Année de publication
2010
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(rigide),
État du livre
Bon
Prix
10,99 €

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Titre
The Lost Books of the Odyssey
Sous-titre
A Novel
Langue
Anglais
Éditeur
Farrar
Publié
2010
Format
rigide
Pages
240
ISBN10
0224090224
ISBN13
9780224090223
Séries
Description
In the plain outside the walls of Troy, Agamemnon demands a fortress. With no materials except a few trees and unlimited sand, the Greeks dig a negative image of a palace into the white plain: a vast, inverted castle soaring into the depths of the earth. 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. Made up of forty-four retellings of passages from Homer's <i>Odyssey</i>, Zachary Mason's book is a fictional apocrypha: a radical and thrilling renovation of Classical legend. He uses Homer's linear narrative and explodes it: presenting fragments of alternative and contradictory re-takes and out-takes of the same familiar stories - the Trojan Horse, the Cyclops, Circe, the Sirens - breaking them up and putting them together into new shapes. Turned inside-out, these stories become glosses, mirrors and mazes that explore and examine Odysseus's journey: allowing us to see it afresh, in all its ambition, sadness and futility. Reminiscent of Borges or the Calvino of <i>Invisible Cities</i>, <i>The Lost Books of the Odyssey</i> is elegant, allusive, provocative and utterly fascinating - and seems destined to become a modern classic.