Preview
  • The Lost Books of the Odyssey

  • By: Zachary Mason
  • Narrated by: Simon Vance
  • Length: 4 hrs and 43 mins
  • 4.0 out of 5 stars (71 ratings)

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The Lost Books of the Odyssey

By: Zachary Mason
Narrated by: Simon Vance
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Publisher's summary

A BRILLIANT AND BEGUILING REIMAGINING OF ONE OF OUR GREATEST MYTHS BY A GIFTED YOUNG WRITER

Zachary Mason's brilliant and beguiling debut novel, The Lost Books of the Odyssey, reimagines Homer's classic story of the hero Odysseus and his long journey home after the fall of Troy. With brilliant prose, terrific imagination, and dazzling literary skill, Mason creates alternative episodes, fragments, and revisions of Homer's original that taken together open up this classic Greek myth to endless reverberating interpretations. The Lost Books of the Odyssey is punctuated with great wit, beauty, and playfulness; it is a daring literary book that marks the emergence of an extraordinary new talent.

Cover and title design by Chin-Yee Lai.

©2010 Zachary Mason (P)2010 Macmillan Audio
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Editorial reviews

Here are 44 retellings of The Odyssey, short chapters that are like apocrypha for the dvd-commentary generation, a fractured mosaic waiting to be pieced back together. Many famous passages are retold several times over: Odysseus returns to Ithaca only to find it abandoned, and then again to find his wife a ghost, or married to an unfit man. In one story Achilles is a golem who slaughters indiscriminately, while Odysseus marries Helen or arranges her murder, becomes the author of The Odyssey itself, and comes face to face with a Trojan doppelganger. Each short chapter is just long enough to sketch a sideways look, but always leaving room for the author's psychologically astute sketches of key players including Penelope, Menelaus, and Agamemnon.

Rather than conveying ironic distance or playful manipulation, Simon Vance’s delivery is earnestly crisp and cautious; words are delivered with attack, almost declamatory like a classical oration, but managing to strike a balance with a more conversational tone, ensuring that each story leaves its impression, despite its brevity. His voice also carries more than a trace of weariness, befitting a tired traveller.

Zachary Mason’s debut novel has been praised for its post-modern approach to The Odyssey, yet Mason’s retelling is entirely in keeping with the spirit of the original, particularly Homer's approach to narrative (famously beginning in media res, and using flashbacks and storytelling to color in the backstory). In fact, Mason’s embellishments and visions seem to spring from the head of Homer wily Odysseus' inquiries into the nature of authorship, illusion, and truth belong to both authors. Odysseus the original unreliable narrator has waited a long time for a Borgesian makeover.

Only rarely does The Lost Books of the Odyssey fall into archness. And nor is it simply post-modern pastiche: there is soul here, too, and poetry. Mason's retellings bring out the ancient story’s hidden truths, such as the innate isolation and heartbreak just under the surface of the Medusa myth. Cyclops' confrontation with Nobody is told from his point of view and the giant is even identified with Homer himself (both blind, both at the mercy of Odysseus). And the ending is lovely, wistful and sad, bemused and elegiac, and Vance delivers it as he does the rest of this short but beautiful book with elegance and ease. Dafydd Phillips

Critic reviews

“Though Simon Vance doesn't play a lute, he is a bard, or maybe the Classics professor everyone wishes to have had, as he spins these revisionist tales of Odysseus and his travels.” —AudioFile

“[A] dazzling debut . . . Stunning and hypnotic . . . Mr. Mason . . . has written a series of jazzy, post-modernist variations on the Odyssey, and in doing so he's created an ingeniously Borgesian novel that's witty, playful, moving and tirelessly inventive . . . This is a book that not only addresses the themes of Homer's classic--the dangers of pride, the protean nature of identity, the tryst between fate and free will--but also poses new questions to the reader about art and originality and the nature of storytelling.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

“[The Lost Books of the Odyssey] is, to my surprise, a wonderful book. I had expected it to be rather preening, and probably thin. But it is intelligent, absorbing, wonderfully written, and perhaps the most revelatory and brilliant prose encounter with Homer since James Joyce.” —Simon Goldhill, The Times Literary Supplement

What listeners say about The Lost Books of the Odyssey

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Beautiful and richly imaginative

A rich set of stories, each taking a part of the original as its inspiration.

Beautiful and richly imaginative .

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Astonishing imagination

Would you listen to The Lost Books of the Odyssey again? Why?

Yes, there is enough there to make it worthwhile.

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Lost Books of the Odyssey?

Putting him forward into the present for a chapter.

What about Simon Vance’s performance did you like?

His voice is like listening to music.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

No, too much to think about.

Any additional comments?

Zachary Mason has an enviable knowledge of the ancient myths and the imagination to bring them back to life.

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4 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

So beautiful. So brilliant.

Great novel (really a series of short stories), a meditation on identity, time, narration, storytelling. Beautiful stripped-down language. Simon Vance terrific as always. One of my favorites books, and audiobooks, of all time. Brilliant.

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    2 out of 5 stars
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The Lost Hours of the Listener

Any additional comments?

This book was a terrible disappointment. I love Homer's works. I've read and listened to them multiple times. After all the rave reviews of 'The Lost Books...' I was very eager to give this a listen. I even bought it without waiting for my credit. All I got for my trouble was a mishmash of disjointed sputterings that made no sense at all. I found the 'stories' uninteresting, dull and without merit. Even Simon Vance couldn't turn this into anything of value. Perhaps others will have a happier experience but I cannot recommend this at all. One of the biggest flops from Audible ever for me.

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3 people found this helpful