In a logical, clear-thinking, pre-911 world Boy Hernandez would be madly filling orders with his newly established women’s fashion line, (B)oy for Bergdorf-Goodman, Bloomingdale’s and other trend setting hotspots. But in this post-911 world of fast and at times, sloppy security work, Boy’s been thrown into Gitmo for allegedly assisting terrorists by funneling money through his clothing design studio. HA!
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.
ZACHARY MASONis 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.
Literature's First Unreliable Narrator
The unexpected lessons of The Lost Books of the Odyssey.
By John SwansburgPosted Thursday, Feb. 18, 2010, at 9:28 AM ET