Neither the introduction nor the number of myths covered is exhaustive, which is a good thing for someone new or newish to Graeco-Roman mythology. He takes you to the sites of myth, providing descriptions—both his own and from ancient sources. He talks about the gods and heroes associated with specific places The book is what it says it is: a history of the Olympian gods from archaic Greece through the Renaissance. An eminent scholar, Graziosi writes for a non-specialist audience with wit and clarity.
I recommend this book especially for readers who are interested in the history of mythology and its transmission across history. For readers who want context on Homeric epic and to understand the complex issues around those texts, I cannot imagine a better introduction that the one Graziosi provides in this book. This meditative book was a pleasant surprise. It elegantly and movingly blends history, literary analysis, and cultural criticism with memoir.
He touches on what can and cannot be known about Homer. He explores the oral tradition and its implications for the relationship between myth and history.
But Circe is a strange child—not powerful, like her father, nor viciously alluring like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power—the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves. Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.
But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from, or the mortals she has come to love.
For more, read our earlier interview with Madeline Miller. The gods watch from above as the dogs venture into their newly unfamiliar world, as they become divided among themselves, as each struggles with new thoughts and feelings. Wily Benjy moves from home to home, Prince becomes a poet, and Majnoun forges a relationship with a kind couple that stops even the Fates in their tracks.
By turns meditative and devastating, charming and strange, Fifteen Dogs shows you can teach an old genre new tricks. For Her Dark Skin is a tightly crafted exploration of the story of Jason and Medea weaving both traditional and contemporary fictional and thematic elements into a sharply ironic tale of revenge, ambition, passion and pride.
Desires and consequences lead the all-too-human characters through a piercing new interpretation of classic themes. Three thousand years ago a war took place where legends were born: Achilles, the greatest of the Greeks, and Hector, prince of Troy. Both men were made and destroyed by the war that shook the foundations of the ancient world. But what if there was more to the tale of these heroes than we know? How would the Trojan War have looked as seen through the eyes of its women?
What follows is a breathtaking tale of love and revenge, destiny and the determination, as these two brave women, the heroes of the Trojan War, and the gods themselves come face to face in an epic battle that will decide the fate of Troy. Girl meets boy. Being a Greek god is not all it once was. Yes, the twelve gods of Olympus are alive and well in the twenty-first century, but they are crammed together in a London townhouse-and none too happy about it.
Soon, what begins as a minor squabble between Aphrodite and Apollo escalates into an epic battle of wills. Two perplexed humans, Alice and Neil, who are caught in the crossfire, must fear not only for their own lives, but for the survival of humankind. Nothing less than a true act of heroism is needed-but can these two decidedly ordinary people replicate the feats of the mythical heroes and save the world? Laden with doom, yet surprising in its moments of innocence and beauty, Helen of Troy is an exquisite page-turner with a cast of irresistible, legendary characters—Odysseus, Hector, Achilles, Menelaus, Priam, Clytemnestra, Agamemnon, as well as Helen and Paris themselves.
With a wealth of material that reproduces the Age of Bronze in all its glory, it brings to life a war that we have all learned about but never before experienced. Constantly guarding his world against other meddling and ambitious deities is stressful work. So when a naked goddess falls directly into his lap, along with the news that he has to shelter her for the indefinite future, he is less than thrilled.
But trust each other? Not a chance. Clytemnestra rules Mycenae now, along with her new lover Aegisthus, and together they plot the bloody murder of Agamemnon on the day of his return after nine years at war.
Judged, despised, cursed by gods she has long since lost faith in, Clytemnestra reveals the tragic saga that led to these bloody actions: how her husband deceived her eldest daughter Iphigeneia with a promise of marriage to Achilles, only to sacrifice her because that is what he was told would make the winds blow in his favor and take him to Troy; how she seduced and collaborated with the prisoner Aegisthus, who shared her bed in the dark and could kill; how Agamemnon came back with a lover himself; and how Clytemnestra finally achieved her vengeance for his stunning betrayal—his quest for victory, greater than his love for his child.
In this ambitious, ingenious narrative, celebrated historical novelist Mary Renault take legendary hero Theseus and spins his myth into a fast-paced and exciting story. As he moves on to Eleusis, Athens, and Crete, his playfulness and fondness for pranks matures into the courage to attempt singular heroic feats, the gallantry and leadership he was known for on the battlefield, and the bold-hearted ingenuity he shows in navigating the labyrinth and slaying the Minotaur.
In what is perhaps the most inventive of all her novels of Ancient Greece, Renault casts Theseus in a surprisingly original pose; she teases the flawed human out of the bronze hero, and draws the plausible out of the fantastic.
Five thousand years out of the labyrinth, the Minotaur finds himself in the American South, living in a trailer park and working as a line cook at a steakhouse. No longer a devourer of human flesh, the Minotaur is a socially inept, lonely creature with very human needs. But over a two-week period, as his life dissolves into chaos, this broken and alienated immortal awakens to the possibility for happiness and to the capacity for love.
The maids form a chanting and singing Chorus, which focuses on two questions that must pose themselves after any close reading of the Odyssey: What led to the hanging of the maids, and what was Penelope really up to? With The Penelopiad, Atwood has written a fierce, funny, and subversive myth that challenges the patriarchal nature of Greek Mythology. It was used in the temple ceremonies of Eros, Greek god of erotic love, and has the power to bring the most intimate sexual fantasies to life.
Realizing the true power of this ancient and dangerous relic, Lia is even more wary of giving it up, though August insists it is only safe with him. One that finds them more tangled up in each other—and in fantasy—than either was prepared for.
A big-hearted novel about familial love and community against all odds, and a wrenching look at the lonesome, brutal, and restrictive realities of rural poverty, Salvage the Bones is muscled with poetry, revelatory, and real. The ancient city of Troy has withstood a decade under siege of the powerful Greek army, who continue to wage bloody war over a stolen woman—Helen. Briseis is just one among thousands of women living behind the scenes in this war—the slaves and prostitutes, the nurses, the women who lay out the dead—all of them erased by history.
With breathtaking historical detail and luminous prose, Pat Barker brings the teeming world of the Greek camp to vivid life. Lewis—the great British writer, scholar, lay theologian, broadcaster, Christian apologist, and bestselling author of Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, The Chronicles of Narnia, and many other beloved classics—brilliantly reimagines the story of Cupid and Psyche.
In this, his final—and most mature and masterful—novel, Lewis reminds us of our own fallibility and the role of a higher power in our lives.
The ancient Greeks continue to captivate us, with clues that lead us into mysteries that have yet to be solved. From the origins of the Labyrinth to the realities of the Trojan War and the role of women, these are some of the best nonfiction commentaries on Greek mythology.
For half a century, the meaning of the inscriptions, and even the language in which they were written, would remain a mystery. These include Michael Ventris, the brilliant amateur who deciphered the script but met with a sudden, mysterious death that may have been a direct consequence of the deipherment; and Alice Kober, the unsung heroine of the story whose painstaking work allowed Ventris to crack the code.
For more than two thousand years this story has been a source of artistic inspiration. But is it true? The Trojans, it turns out, were not ethnic Greeks but an Anatolian people closely allied with the Hittite Empire to the east. At the time of the Trojan War the Greeks were great seafarers while Troy was a more settled civilization.
And while the cause of the war may well have been the kidnapping of a queen—and, more significantly, the seizure of her royal dowry—the underlying cause was a conflict between the Trojans and the Greeks for control of the eastern Aegean Sea.
Written with the authority of a scholar and the vigor of a bestselling narrative historian, The War That Killed Achilles is a superb and utterly timely presentation of one of the timeless stories of Western civilization. As she did in The Endurance and The Bounty, New York Times bestselling author Caroline Alexander has taken apart a narrative we think we know and put it back together in a way that lets us see its true power.
Why Homer Matters is a magical journey of discovery across wide stretches of the past, sewn together by the Iliad and the Odyssey and their metaphors of life and trouble. The poems, which ask the eternal questions about the individual and the community, honor and service, love and war, tell us how we became who we are.
At long last, Mary Beard addresses in one brave book the misogynists and trolls who mercilessly attack and demean women the world over, including, very often, Mary herself. And how many more centuries should we be expected to wait? Greek mythology books appeal to readers of all ages, with some stunning retellings written for young adults.
Check out even more mythology books for teens here. Escape from the realm of the dead is impossible when someone there wants you back. Maybe at her new school, she can start fresh.
Maybe she can stop feeling so afraid. Because even here, he finds her. But if she lets herself fall any further, she may just find herself back in the one place she most fears: the Underworld. Eighteen-year-old Tally is absolutely sure of everything: her genius, the love of her adoptive family, the loyalty of her best friend, Shane, and her future career as a Nobel prize-winning astronomer.
Her goddess mom whisks her off to the Underworld to hide until Spring. Will Hades ever admit his feelings for her? The Underworld is a very nice place, but is it worth giving up her life in the realm of the living?
Her goddess powers are developing some serious, kick-butt potential. Every girl who has taken the test has died. Her last wish? To move back to her childhood home. Then she meets Henry. And mesmerizing. Now saving her mother seems crazily possible. Like a female Odysseus in search of home, she navigates a dark world full of strange creatures, gathers companions and loses them, finds love and loses it, and faces her mortal enemy.
In her signature style, Francesca Lia Block has created a world that is beautiful in its destruction and as frightening as it is lovely.
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