2025/071: The Lost Books of the Odyssey — Zachary Mason

2025/071: The Lost Books of the Odyssey — Zachary Mason

Now every debt is paid, every sin erased and I can begin anew, I who was once Odysseus and now am no one. [p. 145]

The conceit of this novel, or collection of short stories, is that the Oxyrhynchus Papyri contain 'forty-four concise variations on Odysseus’s story that omit stock epic formulae in favour of honing a single trope or image down to an extreme of clarity'. These are those variations, some more credible than others, which are effectively Odyssey AU^*. 

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