METAMORPHICA
By Zachary Mason
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, July 10, 2018
In the tradition of his bestselling debut novel The Lost Books of the Odyssey, Zachary Mason’s Metamorphica transforms Ovid’s epic poem of endless transformation. It reimagines the stories of Narcissus, Pygmalion and Galatea, Midas and Atalanta, and strings them together like the stars in constellations―even Ovid becomes a story. It’s as though the ancient mythologies had been rewritten by Borges or Calvino; Metamorphica is an archipelago in which to linger for a while; it reflects a little light from the morning of the world.
Selected Praise
"Mason shows that [The Lost Books of the Odyssey] was a warm-up for an even more ambitious reimagining of an epic work. Where Odysseus unifies the earlier work, Ovid's Metamorphoses and, necessarily, Mason's latest are more sprawling, introducing readers to the likes of Icarus, Midas, Orpheus, and Eurydice . . . Both soaring and deep, this dazzling narrative creates a fictional universe of myth that transcends time itself." ―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
About the Author
Zachary Mason is a computer scientist and the author of The Lost Books of the Odyssey and Void Star. He lives in California.