Ancient Greek Myth in World Fiction since 1989

Edith Hall is Professor of Classics at King’s College London, and Consultant Director of the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama in Oxford, UK. She has published more than twenty books on ancient Greek culture and its reception including The Return of Ulysses (2008), Greek Tragedy(2010), Adventures with Iphigenia in Tauris (2013) and Introducing the Ancient Greeks (2015). Justine McConnell is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH), University of Oxford, UK. She is the author of Black Odysseys: The Homeric Odyssey in the African Diaspora since 1939 (2013), and co-editor of Ancient Slavery and Abolition: from Hobbes to Hollywood (2011) and The Oxford Handbook of Greek Drama in the Americas (2015).

This is an enjoyable, scholarly and illuminating collection of essays that highlights the continuing significance of ancient Greek texts for writers across the world today. I found it a horizon-expanding reading experience. -- Susan Bassnett, Professor of Comparative Literature, University of Glasgow, UK This volume of exciting analyses of fiction published after 1989 in all corners of the world is a reminder that if classical literature comes from the past it definitely belongs to the present. Any reader of this book will have a hard time believing that modern culture can be understood without constant use of this stock of stories. Through centuries the ancient texts, plots and characters have penetrated our ways of seeing the world. This volume is a living proof that today's literature, film and media products constantly engage in a surprising and not always respectful dialogue with Homer, Virgil, Euripides and lot of others long dead and gone. They are messengers from a time before national literatures and national cultures crossing over to a global world breaking away from national boundaries. This lively, learned and engaging book offers a rich resource for students, teachers and everybody who enjoys contemporary fiction. -- Svend Erik Larsen, Professor of Comparative Literature, Aarhus University, Denmark, Vice-President of the Academia Europaea, co-editor of Orbis Litterarum With its global reach and focus on recent fiction, this collection takes the study of classical reception into important new territory. The editors have assembled a diverse group of contributors to show that Greek myth remains a vital resource for story-tellers in a world of political upheavals and redrawn cultural maps. -- Sheila Murnaghan, Alfred Reginald Allen Memorial Professor of Greek, University of Pennsylvania, USA

• AcknowledgementsList of ContributorsIntroduction, Justine McConnell 1 From Anthropophagy to Allegory and Back: A Study ofClassical Myth and the Brazilian Novel, Patrice Rankine 2 Ibrahim Al-Koni’s Lost Oasis as Atlantis and His Demon asTyphon, William M. Hutchins 3 Greek Myth and Mythmaking in Witi Ihimaera’s The Matriarchand The Dream Swimmer, Simon Perris4 War, Religion and Tragedy: The Revolt of the Muckers inLuiz Antonio de Assis Brasil’s Videiras de Cristal,Sofia Frade5 Translating Myths, Translating Fictions, Lorna Hardwick 6 Echoes of Ancient Greek Myths in Murakami Haruki’snovels and in Other Works of Contemporary JapaneseLiterature, Giorgio Amitrano 7 ‘It’s All in the Game’: Greek Myth and The Wire, Adam Ganz 8 Writing a New Irish Odyssey: Theresa Kishkan’s A Man ina Distant Field, Fiona Macintosh 9 The Minotaur on the Russian Internet: Viktor Pelevin’sHelmet of Horror, Anna Ljunggren 10 Diagnosis: Overdose – Status: Critical. Odysseys inBernhard Schlink’s Die Heimkehr, Sebastian Matzner 11 Narcissus and the Furies: Myth and Docufiction inJonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones, Edith Hall12 Philhellenic Imperialism and the Invention of the ClassicalPast: Twenty-first Century Re-imaginingsof Odysseus in the Greek War for Independence, Efrossini Spentzou13 The ‘Poem of Force’ in Australia: David Malouf, Ransom and ChloeHooper, The Tall Man, Margaret Reynolds 14 Young Female Heroes from Sophocles to the Twenty-FirstCentury, Helen Eastman 15 Generation Telemachus: Dinaw Mengestu’s How to Readthe Air, Justine McConnell