Canongate's The Myths Books
Karen Armstrong's concise yet compelling investigation into the history of myth takes us from the Palaeolithic period and the mythology of the hunters right up to the 'Great Western Transformation' of the last 500 years. She shows us that the history of myth is the history of humanity, and our stories and beliefs, our curiosity and attempts to understand the world, link us to our ancestors and each other. Myths help us make sense of the universe, and of ourselves. Armstrong's characteristically insightful and eloquent book serves as a brilliant and thought-provoking introduction to myth in the broadest sense - and why we dismiss it only at our peril.
Israel's most lauded contemporary writer retells the myth of Samson, one of the most tempestuous, charismatic, and colorful characters in the Hebrew Bible. There are few other Bible stories with so much drama and action, narrative fireworks and raw emotion, as we find in the tale of Samson: the battle with the lion; the three hundred burning foxes; the women he bedded and the one woman that he loved; his betrayal by all the women in his life, from his mother to Delilah; and, in the end, his murderous suicide, when he brought the house down on himself and three thousand Philistines. "Yet, beyond the wild impulsiveness, the chaos, the din, we can make out a life story that is, at bottom, the tortured journey of a single, lonely and turbulent soul who never found, anywhere, a true home in the world, whose very body was a harsh place of exile. For me, this discovery, this recognition, is the point at which the myth — for all its grand images, its larger-than-life adventures — slips silently into the day-to-day existence of each of us, into our most private moments, our buried secrets." — from David Grossman's introduction to Lion's Honey.
Penelope. Immortalised in legend and myth as the devoted wife of the glorious Odysseus, silently weaving and unpicking and weaving again as she waits for her husband's return. Now Penelope wanders the underworld, spinning a different kind of thread: her own side of the story - a tale of lust, greed and murder.
They have never met, they have been assigned strange pseudonyms, they inhabit identical rooms which open out onto very different landscapes, and they have entered a dialogue which they cannot escape - a discourse defined and destroyed by the Helmet of Horror. Its wearer is the dominant force they call Asterisk, a force for good and ill in which the Minotaur is forever present and Theseus is the great unknown. Victor Pelevin has created a mesmerising world where the surreal and the hyperreal collide. "The Helmet of Horror" is structured according to the internet exchanges of the twenty first century, radically reinventing the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur for an age where information is abundant but knowledge ultimately unattainable.
It is 1938 and Sigmund Freud, suffering from the debilitating effects of cancer, has been permitted by the Nazis to leave Vienna. He seeks refuge in England, taking up residence in the house in Hampstead in which he will die only fifteen months later. But his last months are made vivid by the arrival of a stranger, who comes and goes according to Freud's state of health. Who is the mysterious visitor and why has he come to tell the famed proponent of the Oedipus complex his strange story? Set partly in pre-war London and partly in ancient Greece, Where Three Roads Meet is as brilliantly compelling as it is moving. Former psychoanalyst and acclaimed novelist Salley Vickers revisits a crime committed long ago which still has disturbing reverberations for us all.
Knopf Canada welcomes one of China’s most acclaimed and bestselling writers–author of Raise the Red Lantern –to the list with a fascinating retelling of a magical story–already an international bestseller in China and Europe. Through Binu’s extraordinary story, Su Tong illuminates one of China’s most magical myths. In Peach village, crying is forbidden. But as a child, Binu never learnt to hide her tears. Shunned by the villagers, she faces a bleak future until she meets the man she will marry, Qiliang. A few years after their marriage, Qiliang disappears. Binu learns that he has been transported hundreds of miles and forced to labour on a project of terrifying ambition and scale–the building of the Great Wall. Inspired by her love for her husband, Binu sets out on an extraordinary journey across Great Swallow Mountain, with only a blind frog for company. What follows is an unforgettable story of passion, hardship and magical adventure.
Baba Yaga is an old hag who lives in a house built on chicken legs and kidnaps small children. She is one of the most pervasive and powerful creatures in all mythology. But what does she have to do with a writer's journey to Bulgaria in 2007 on behalf of her mother? Or with a trio of old women who decide to spend a week together at a hotel spa? Startlingly original, "Baba Yaga Laid an Egg" takes a traditional myth and spins it afresh. The result is an extraordinary meditation on femininity, ageing, identity, secrets, storytelling and love.
From internationally bestselling crime writer Natsuo Kirino comes a mythical feminist noir about family secrets, broken loyalties, and the search from truth in a deceitful world. In a place like no other, on a mystical island in the shape of tear drop, two sisters are born into a family of oracles. Kamikuu is admired far and wide for her otherworldly beauty; small and headstrong Namima learns to live in her sister’s shadow. On her sixth birthday, Kamikuu is chosen to become the next Oracle, serving the realm of light, while Namima is forced to serve the realm of darknessdestined to spend eternity guiding the spirits of the deceased to the underworld. As the sisters serve opposite fates, Namima embarks on a journey that takes her from the experience of first love to the aftermath of scalding betrayal. Caught in an elaborate web of treachery, she travels between the land of the living and the Realm of the Dead, seeking vengeance and closure. At the heart of this exquisitely dark tale, Kirino masterfully reimagines the ancient Japanese creation myth of Izanami and Izanaki. A provocative, fantastical saga, The Goddess Chronicle tells a sumptuous story of sex, murder, gods and goddesses, and bittersweet revenge.