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A Novel
by Zachary Mason
Zachary Mason's brilliant and beguiling debut novel, The Lost Books of the Odyssey, reimagines Homer's classic story of the hero Odysseus and his long journey home after the fall of Troy. With brilliant prose, terrific imagination, and dazzling literary skill, Mason creates alternative episodes, fragments, and revisions of Homer's original that taken together open up this classic Greek myth to endless reverberating interpretations. The Lost Books of the Odyssey is punctuated with great wit, beauty, and playfulness; it is a daring literary page-turner that marks the emergence of an extraordinary new talent.
"Starred Review. This original work consistently surprises and delights." - Publishers Weekly
"In the end, however, Lost Books is not so much an engrossing story as a paean to the power of storytelling." - Library Journal
"Although he can at times be too clever for his own good, Mason's novel displays a high level of fun and thought." - School Library Journal (Adult Books for High Schoolers)
"The result is more existential than heroic, permeated by themes of identity, consciousness, myth and memory ... The epic as kaleidoscope, more playful than profound." - Kirkus Reviews
"Mason delights in doubles, spirals, conceptual mazes and Moebius strips. He is only occasionally too clever. Mainly, he is a wondrous pleasure to read." - Los Angeles Times
This information about The Lost Books of the Odyssey was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Zachary Mason is a computer scientist specializing in artificial intelligence. He was a finalist for the 2008 New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award. He lives in California. A paperback edition of this book was published by Starcherone Books in 2006/2007.
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