A major literary event... the new novel from the award-winning author of Due Preparations for the Plague (also available from Bolinda Audio).
In the ancient myth, Orpheus travels to the underworld to rescue his lover Eurydice from death. In this compelling re-imagining of the Orpheus story, Leela travels into an underworld of kidnapping, torture, and despair in search of her lover. A mathematical genius, Leela has escaped her hardscrabble Southern hometown to study in Boston. There she encounters Mishka, a young Australian musician who soon becomes her lover. Then one day Leela is picked up off the street and taken to an interrogation centre. There has been an 'incident', an explosion on the underground; terrorists are suspected. Her interrogators reveal that Mishka may not be all he seems. But as she struggles to digest all this, Mishka disappears...
Achingly sensual, effortlessly lyrical, Janette Turner Hospital's dazzling Orpheus Lost is a powerful and disturbing novel. It is both a love story on a grand scale that spans America, Australia and Baghdad, and an examination of what happens to individuals when terrible mistakes are made in the name of 'national security'.
Download and start listening now!
"Shifting between unlikely perspectives of a mathematician, an Army/ Security guard and a fragile, emotionally wounded and gifted musician, explores the terrain of falling into the metaphorical underworld of Hades. These characters make a fatal mistake and 'Orpeus', the double identity accidently becomes associated with a terrorist organisation. This novel is about the guilt, revenge and justice. It is also about the ramifications of uncovering terrain that is best forgotten. Like her earlier novel, Tiger in the Tiger Pit, this novel beautifully describes music. But this time, she evokes Eastern as well as Western music. A great book. I don't know why she isn't more polular. She is a prolific Australian author. Motifs and descriptions of music similar to Vikram Seth's An Equal Music and Peter Goldsworthy's Maestro. Does it matter if you don't know the myths of Orpheus? Books that make literary allusions should not be seen as inaccessable. It makes you want to find out more about Greek mythology and read The Iliad and The Odyssey (even in a condensed children's book format to start with). No, literary allusions should never detract from a book, but enhance it. More writing should do this - it makes the reading a more enriching and educating experience, if we chose to remember or find out about the other stories."
—
Emma (5 out of 5 stars)