The Lost Books of the Odyssey
Zachary Mason
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.
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About Zachary Mason
Reviews for The Lost Books of the Odyssey
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