Return from Troy - Hardcover

Clarke, Lindsay

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 000715027X ISBN 13: 9780007150274

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2005

Synopsis

The second part of a masterful retelling of the stories surrounding the Trojan War. RETURN FROM TROY begins after the sacking of Troy, covering Odysseus’s trials and Agamemnon’s fate.

The Heroes Return is the second volume in this masterful retelling of the myths surrounding the Trojan War. In two parts the final novel begins by covering the return of Agamemnon to Mycenae, his murder by his wife Clytaemnestra in revenge for sacrificing their daughter and the consequences of that killing. The second part focuses on the adventures of Odysseus on his long struggle to return home to Ithaca and his wife Penelope.

Both volumes end in an Afterword; relating the mythological themes and motifs of the stories to crucial aspects of contemporary experience.

About this title

Review:

Praise for THE WAR AT TROY:

‘I found The War at Troy a triumph of retelling the ancient story of the siege and its aftermath, a readable and freshened version that keeps one turning the pages’
Alan Sillitoe

Praise for Lindsay Clarke:

‘I’m awed by the web you’ve spun. Not only the beautiful complexities of it but the fine texture of the threads ...Full of wise things.’
Ted Hughes

From the Back Cover:

After ten years of war Troy has fallen, yet even as they divide the spoils, quarrels break out among the victorious Argives. Soon it seems that even their gods have turned against them, and when they take to their ships they discover that their ordeals have only just begun.

Fulfilling a promise to Odysseus, Phemius, Bard of Ithaca, tells the story of the warlords' fateful return from the war at Troy. With Cassandra at his side and the treasure of Troy in his hold, Agamemnon sails back to Mycenae, where his wife Clytaemnestra has long nursed a vengeful fury over his sacrifice of their daughter Iphigenaia. Meanwhile his brother Menelaus must decide the fate of Helen, over whose incomparable beauty the war was fought.

But this is primarily a novel about Odysseus, a man so traumatized by the slaughter his own ingenuity has unleashed that he no longer believes himself fit to return to his wife and son. Driven both by tempests and by his own torment, he embarks on a voyage which will take him out to the margins of the world and deep into the shadows of his own heart before a mysterious sequence of initiations frees him to make the hopeful journey home.

Whitbread Award-winning novelist Lindsay Clarke brings to bear his trademark lyricism, lucidity and mythic power in a novel which offers a unique and tellingly contemporary interpretation of one of the world's great stories.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 000715027X
• ISBN 13: 9780007150274
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400