Odysseus and Penelope: An Ordinary Marriage (Studies in Austrian Literature, Culture, and Thought Translation Series)

Blurb

In this profound and entertaining novel, the Viennese historian and classicist, Inge Merkel, intimates with irony, humor, and a twinkle in her eye why it took Odysseus twenty years to return to his wife and son. It is the old story of long-suffering resourceful Odysseys told from the point of view of clever Penelope. Merkel is interested less in the heroic epic than in the experiences of a woman whose husband abandons wife and infant to pursue adventures in the Trojan War. What Odysseus inflicts on Penelope is, according to Merkel, human, all too human. How does a wife wait for two decades for her husband, who feigns patriotic duty and plunges into battle and amorous adventures? How does she welcome her hero, who has spent himself on the plains of Troy and in exotic caverns and now wishes to be comforted at home?