Bad Boys Of Athens: Classics from the Greeks to Game of Thrones by Daniel Mendelsohn

131 in stock

239mm x 158mm x 33mm

Pages: 384

GÇÿMendelsohn takes the classical costumes off figures like Virgil and Sappho, Homer and Horace GǪ He writes about things so clearly they come to feel like some of the most important things you have ever been told.GÇÖ Sebastian Barry
Over the past three decades, Daniel MendelsohnGÇÖs essays and reviews have earned him a reputation as GÇÿour most irresistible literary criticGÇÖ (New York Times). This striking new collection exemplifies the way in which Mendelsohn GÇô a classicist by training GÇô uses the classics as a lens to think about urgent contemporary debates.
There is much to surprise here. Mendelsohn invokes the automatons featured in HomerGÇÖs epics to help explain the AI films Ex Machina and Her, and perceives how Ted Hughes sought redemption by translating a play of Euripides (the GÇÿbad boy of AthensGÇÖ) about a wayward husband whose wife returns from the dead. There are essays on SapphoGÇÖs sexuality and the feminism of Game of Thrones; on how VirgilGÇÖs Aeneid prefigures post-World War II history and why we are still obsessed with the Titanic; on Patrick Leigh FermorGÇÖs final journey, Karl Ove KnausgaardGÇÖs autofiction and the plays of Tom Stoppard, Tennessee Williams, and No+½l Coward. The collection ends with a poignant account of the authorGÇÖs boyhood correspondence with the historical novelist Mary Renault, which inspired his ambition to become a writer.
In The Bad Boy of Athens, Mendelsohn provokes and dazzles with erudition, emotion and tart wit while his essays dance across eras, cultures and genres. This is a provocative collection which sees todayGÇÖs master of popular criticism using the ancient past to reach into the very heart of modern culture.