Penelope's Web by Christopher Rush

Penelope's Web by Christopher Rush

A salt-bitten stranger from the sea, a war-torn wolf, Odysseus returns to Ithaca, crushes the claimants to his throne and bed, and confronts his wife, Penelope. But, the story does not end there, it’s the start of another. After years of fighting and wandering, a war hero can find home more hellish than the battlefield, peace more awful than war. War changes everything. . . Christopher Rush has created a unique and dynamic first-person voice for his modern-day Odysseus: contemporary, brusque, full of military jargon and frequent, unflinching swearing. This narrative - depicting brutal violence, womanising and ambivalence about home - is intertwined with the gorgeous, poetic lyricism of Penelope's idealised, mythic account of her husband's exploits in Troy and on the seas, which she weaves into the eponymous web. Penelope's Web is an epic novel for our time, as appealing to readers who know nothing about Greek literature as to scholars of the Odyssey and the Iliad. This re-imagining of Greek texts and classical mythology is a masterful, resonant study of war and peace that draws implicit parallels between contemporary military conflicts and the legendary battles of antiquity.

'Penelope's Web is a book about war that, like The Naked and the Dead or Catch-22, manages to be about very much more… Christopher Rush has written a profound meditation not just on our present condition but on how we all live inside 'the web', how we weave fact, the way we make and unmake fictions, and how we choose to live and die by them'

-- Brian Morton * Scottish Review of Books *

'Hugely entertaining and instructively disturbing.. it's also fiercely learned... The novel is beautifully written and superbly paced. Its 500 pages whizz past like one of Odysseus' deadly arrows'

-- Dr Jon Hesk, Hellenist Lecturer at St Andrews University

'Few Scottish writers are as visceral or painterly in their prose'

* Herald *

'Read it if you yearn for something startlingly original and uncompromising'

-- Antonia Senior * The Times, Historical Book of the Month *

Christopher Rush was born in St Monans and taught literature for thirty years in Edinburgh. He has written in many genres as a poet, novelist, memoirist, biographer, children's writer and for the screen. His books include A Twelvemonth and a Day, Will, Penelope's Web and the highly acclaimed To Travel Hopefully. 

SKU	Non disponible
ISBN 13	9781846973093
ISBN 10	1846973090
Titre	Penelope's Web
Auteur	Christopher Rush
État	Non disponible
Type de reliure	Hardback
Éditeur	Birlinn General
Année de publication	2015-09-09
Nombre de pages	509
Note de couverture	La photo du livre est présentée à titre d'illustration uniquement. La reliure, la couverture ou l'édition réelle peuvent varier.
Note	Non disponible