"Breathtakingly successful." --Michael Dirda, Washington Post A bold and dynamic retelling of five great male-female pairings from the Greek myths: Prometheus and Pandora, Jason and Medea, Oedipus and Antigone, Achilles and Thetis, and Odysseus and Penelope. Award-winning historical novelist and playwright John Spurling draws on his lifelong love and knowledge of Classical Greek drama and poetry to reanimate five great male-female storylines from the Greek myths. The Greek myths, refined by the great poets and playwrights of ancient Greece, distil the essence of human life: its brief span, its pride, courage, and insecurity, its anxious relationship with the natural world--earth, sea, and sky, represented by powerful gods and monsters. Taking inspiration from the incomparably beautiful and intense poetry of Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, John Spurling--a lifelong classicist and an award-winning playwright--spins five myths for contemporary readers. These captivating tales center on male-female pairs--Prometheus and Pandora, Jason and the sorceress Medea, Oedipus and his daughter Antigone, Achilles and his mother Thetis, Odysseus and Penelope--who, in the course of their stories, destroyed dynasties, raised and felled heroes, and sealed the fates of men.