Purchase

Amazon

Add to Wish List

Also by Margaret Atwood:

Fourteen Days, June 2023
Hardcover
Burning Questions, March 2022
Hardcover / e-Book
The Heart Goes Last, October 2015
Hardcover / e-Book
Stone Mattress, September 2014
Hardcover / e-Book
Maddaddam, January 2013
Hardcover / e-Book
In Other Worlds, October 2011
Hardcover
The Year of the Flood, October 2009
Hardcover
Payback, January 2009
Paperback
The Handmaid's Tale, October 2006
Hardcover / e-Book (reprint)
Moral Disorder, September 2006
Hardcover
Penelopiad, November 2005
Trade Size

PENELOPIAD
By: Margaret Atwood

The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus

Myths
Canongate
November 2005
192 pages
ISBN: 1841957178
Trade Size
Add to Wish List

Historical

"Homer’s Odyssey is not the only version of the story. Mythic material was originally oral, and also local -- a myth would be told one way in one place and quite differently in another. I have drawn on material other than the Odyssey, especially for the details of Penelope’s parentage, her early life and marriage, and the scandalous rumors circulating about her. I’ve chosen to give the telling of the story to Penelope and to the twelve hanged maids. The maids form a chanting and singing Chorus, which focuses on two questions that must pose themselves after any close reading of the Odyssey: What led to the hanging of the maids, and what was Penelope really up to? The story as told in the Odyssey doesn’t hold water: there are too many inconsistencies. I’ve always been haunted by the hanged maids and, in The Penelopiad, so is Penelope herself." -- from Margaret Atwood’s Foreword to The Penelopiad

Media Buzz

All Things Considered - November 25, 2005