The Children of Jocasta
A Viscerally Atmospheric Retelling of Greek Myth
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Pan Macmillan
Published:24th Sep '21
Should be back in stock very soon
A stunning reimagining of the Oedipus and Antigone stories told from the perspectives of the women the myths overlooked.
From the Women's Prize-shortlisted author Natalie Haynes comes a stunning reimagining of the Oedipus and Antigone myths, revealing a new side of an ancient story . . .
'Passionate and gripping' – Madeline Miller, bestselling author of Circe
A powerful retelling of Oedipus and Antigone that casts fresh light on the women the myths overlooked. From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Stone Blind, Natalie Haynes.
My siblings and I have grown up in a cursed house, children of cursed parents . . .
Jocasta is just fifteen when she is ordered to marry the King of Thebes, an old man she has never met. But it is her duty to produce an heir, who will alter the course of her life forever.
Ismene is the same age when she is attacked in the palace she calls home. Since the day of her parents' tragic deaths, it had been the one place she felt safe. But with a single act of violence, all that is about to change.
With the turn of these two events, a tragedy is set in motion. But not as you know it . . .
'A wonderful and inventive take on an ancient tale' – The Times
'Haynes’s fascination with this long vanished world is evident in every line' – The Guardian
'Glorious, gripping and brutal . . . I loved it' – Victoria Derbyshire, journalist and broadcaster
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Praise for Natalie Haynes:
'Witty, gripping, ruthless' – Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid's Tale, via X
'The great champion of women in Greek myth' – Daily Mail
‘A fierce feminist exploration of female rage, written with wit and empathy’ – Glamour
A passionate and gripping account of a famously dysfunctional family. Haynes balances a fresh take on the material with a deep love for her sources, wearing her scholarship with grace, and giving new voice to the often-overlooked but fascinating Jocasta and Ismene. -- Madeline Miller, Women's Prize winning author of The Song of Achilles and Circe
Haynes’s fascination with this long vanished world is evident in every line . . . Her Thebes... is vividly captured: a place of hard light and sharp shadows, dust, fountains and dry heat. * The Guardian *
Natalie Haynes takes on Sophocles in her vivid and affecting second novel -- Fiction to look out for in 2017 * Observer *
Glorious, gripping and brutal . . . I loved it -- Victoria Derbyshire, journalist and broadcaster
New life is breathed into a powerful ancient story through Natalie Haynes's clever and vivid story telling. -- Martha Kearney, journalist and former host of Today
Nearly every page of Natalie Haynes's The Children of Jocasta could stand alone as poetry. This is a visceral, engrossing, and meticulously-crafted reimagining of two of the most important stories of all time. A truly remarkable feat -- Dr Amanda Foreman, author of The Duchess
In this gripping novel, Haynes takes us to the breaking heart of one epically dysfunctional family and makes heroines of those previously doomed to be spectators of their own tragedy -- Damian Barr, author of Maggie & Me
Haynes is master of her trade, crafting perfect sentences and believable characters who speak and think in delicately nuanced language. [She] succeeds in breathing warm life into some of our oldest stories to show how remarkably little basic human relationships and emotions have changed * The Telegraph *
Atmospherically evoking a landscape of longed-for lakes and dark mountains, Haynes also subtly explores the “space between us and them” – between rulers and the people; parents and children; our personas and most secret selves * The Observer *
A wonderful and inventive take on an ancient tale -- Antonia Senior * The Times *
Haynes has written her own version of the tragedy, finding new space in the narrative by looking at it through the eyes of two characters neglected by antiquity: Oedipus’s mother/bride Jocasta and their youngest daughter Ismene . . . Some of this novel’s greatest satisfactions come from the way Haynes translates the story out of the mythic and into a naturalistic register of love, loss and ambition . . . The ancient city state comes vividly alive in Haynes’s hands, and canny deviations from the archetypal outline keep the suspense going. In The Children of Jocasta, Haynes has written a fine new story between the old lines. * The Spectator *
ISBN: 9781529057133
Dimensions: 197mm x 130mm x 24mm
Weight: 253g
352 pages