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Published Jun 2013
256 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publication Information
From the award-winning author of The Golden Mean, a captivating, wholly transporting new novel that follows Aristotle's strong-willed daughter as she shapes her own destiny: an unexpected love story, a tender portrait of a girl and her father, and an astonishing journey through the underbelly of a supposedly enlightened society.
Aristotle has never been able to resist a keen mind, and Pythias is certainly her father's daughter: besting his brightest students, refusing to content herself with a life circumscribed by the kitchen, the loom, and, eventually, a husband. Into her teenage years, she is protected by the reputation of her adored father, but with the death of Alexander the Great, her fortunes suddenly change. Aristotle's family is forced to flee Athens for a small town, where the great philosopher soon dies, and orphaned Pythias quickly discovers that the world is not a place of logic after all, but one of superstition. As threats close in on her - a rebellious household, capricious gods and goddesses - she will need every ounce of wit she possesses, and the courage to seek refuge where she least expects it.
"A provocative tale that undoes any romantic delusions a reader might hold about ancient Greek society and thought." - Kirkus
"Lyon does a remarkable job of making Pythias, her ancient world, and her eternal problems raw and compelling." - Publishers Weekly
"A remarkable novel, not just a pleasure to read but also a book that I expect to reread several times ... While Woolf's classic book A Room of One's Own remains a brilliant polemic, it is a mere sketch compared to the thickly and quirkily imagined world of ancient Greek women that Lyon gives us in her novel." - National Post
"Potently elegiac ... Lyon shows with chilling precision just how quickly a life can unravel ...She has a knack for intrigue, the sizzle behind seemingly ordinary remarks, and she uses this to great effect." - Madeline Miller, The Guardian (U.K.)
"Exhilaratingly original ... This novel thrills in its immediacy and the family at its heart, in their love for each other, is instantly, captivatingly real." - Daily Mail (U.K.)
"Exceptional ... Lyon takes readers on a journey they won't soon forget; it includes love, lust, Greek gods and goddesses, mythology, and more ... Spectacular." - Vancouver Sun
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Photo: Phillip Chin
Annabel Lyon’s story collection, Oxygen, and book of novellas, The Best Thing for You, were published in Canada to wide acclaim. The Golden Mean, her first novel, was a Canadian bestseller and was published in six languages. It won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and was nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Governor General’s Award for Fiction, and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. Lyon lives in British Columbia with her husband and two children.
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