Katharina Hacker

In seven exquisitely crafted stories, the world of classical mythology comes to life--in ways you would never expect. Katharina Hacker's vivid, literate imagination has created a masterpiece, seven separate stories yet all interlinked, of figures of Greek antiquity inexplicably--or explicably--living in the modern world. Odysseus never buried Elpenor, so he sits around train stations, drinking, bending the ear of any unsuspecting traveler he can grumble to. Sisyphus is still rolling the stone the gods condemned him with--but now he's doing it in a hotel room, to the consternation of the hotelier who is more than a little bemused by his strange guest. These are poignant, potent tales, addressing the ageless themes of (mythological) past and present, memory and dream, speech and silence, love, loss, guilt, frustration--the human condition epitomized. And epitomized through a poetic, always vivid and often rhythmic prose, words chosen for their sound as well as for the images they evoke. The mood is sometimes ghostly, sometimes sad; all of the stories are imbued with a triste humor. Hacker's ease with classical figures is reflected in their immediacy for the contemporary reader.

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