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The recurring language motif of Weight is I want to tell the story again. \u003cbr\u003eMy work is full of Cover Versions. I like to take stories we think we know and record them differently. In the retelling comes a new emphasis or bias, and the new arrangement of the key elements demands that fresh material be injected into the existing text. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWeight moves far away from the simple story of Atlas's punishment and his temporary relief when Hercules takes the world off his shoulders. 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How have they evolved? And why do we still so desperately need them? \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe history of myth is the history of humanity; our stories and beliefs, our curiosity and attempts to understand the world, link us to our ancestors and each other. Myths help us make sense of the universe. Armstrong takes us from the Palaeolithic period and the myths of the hunters right up to the Great Western Transformation of the last five hundred years and the discrediting of myth by science. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHeralding a major series of retellings of international myths by authors from around the world, Armstrong's characteristically insightful and eloquent book serves as a brilliant and thought-provoking introduction to myth in the broadest sense--and why we dismiss it only at our peril. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWitty, informative and contemplative: Ms. Armstrong can simplify complex ideas, but she is never simplistic. --\u003ci\u003eNew York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eArmstrong writes with sensitivity and wisdom. 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Left alone for twenty years when Odysseus goes off to fight in the Trojan war after the abduction of Helen, Penelope manages, in the face of scandalous rumours, to maintain the kingdom of Ithaca, bring up her wayward son, and keep over a hundred suitors at bay, simultaneously. When Odysseus finally comes home after enduring hardships, overcoming monsters and sleeping with goddesses, he kills her suitors and - curiously - twelve of her maids. In a splendid contemporary twist to the ancient story, Margaret Atwood has chosen to give the telling of it to Penelope and to her twelve hanged Maids, asking: What led to the hanging of the maids, and what was Penelope really up to? In Atwood's dazzling, playful retelling, the story becomes as wise and compassionate as it is haunting, and as wildly entertaining as it is disturbing. 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By creating a mesmerizing world where the surreal and the hyperreal collide, \u003ci\u003eThe Helmet of Horror\u003c\/i\u003e is a radical retelling of the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur set in an Internet chat room. They have never met, they have been assigned strange pseudonyms, they inhabit identical rooms that open out onto very different landscapes, and they have entered a dialogue they cannot escape -- a discourse defined and destroyed by the Helmet of Horror. Its wearer is the dominant force they call Asterisk, a force for good and ill in which the Minotaur is forever present and Theseus is the great unknown. \u003ci\u003eThe Helmet of Horror\u003c\/i\u003e is structured according to the way we communicate in the twenty-first century -- using the Internet -- yet instilled with the figures and narratives of classical mythology. 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Yet beyond the wild impulsiveness, the chaos, the din, we can make out a life story that is, at bottom, the tortured journey of a single, lonely and turbulent soul who never found, anywhere, a true home in the world, whose very body was a harsh place of exile. For me, this discovery, this recognition, is the point at which the myth - for all its grand images, its larger-than-life adventures - slips silently into the day-to-day existence of each of us, into our most private moments, our buried secrets From David Grossman's Introduction to Lion's Honey A writer of passionate honesty, unafraid to ask terrible questions. 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There is the goddess Tiamat, who is split in two to envelop the world; the fearsome scorpion people who guard the rising Sun; and the hero Gilgamesh, who is more than twice the height of other men. But behind the often unfamiliar names and fantastical tales, we find themes that are touchingly close to home: love and friendship, grief, anger, frustration, humour, the experiences at the very core of being human.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e The Babylonian myths are among humanity’s oldest and have had a substantial influence on surrounding traditions, such as Greek mythology and the Hebrew Bible, and yet they remain largely unexplored. There are creation myths, destructive floods, passionate love affairs and violent battles, all reflective of a society that was asking questions such as ‘where do we come from?’, ‘why do bad things happen to good people?’ and ‘what becomes of us after we die?’ – much like we still do today. 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