First published 2010
Odysseus wanders through versions of his own story. In one telling, he never left Ithaca at all. In another, he becomes a book seller who has forgotten his true identity. Sometimes he encounters different versions of Penelope, or finds himself trapped in labyrinths of his own making. Mason presents these tales as lost chapters from Homer's epic, each one shifting the familiar narrative into unexpected territory. The hero who once sailed home from Troy now navigates through multiple realities of his own legend. Some fragments show him as conqueror, others as victim, still others as a man who questions whether his adventures ever happened. Each version reveals different facets of the wanderer's character while challenging what we think we know about his journey. These reimagined episodes form a puzzle where each piece changes the meaning of the whole, creating a meditation on storytelling itself through the lens of one man's mythic voyage.
Genres: mythology, literary-fiction, fantasy, retellings
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: multiple-perspectives, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Ithaca, Troy
Period: Ancient Greece
228 pages · Hardcover · Farrar, Straus and Giroux