The shape-shifting poetry of Ovid's Metamorphoses has fascinated writers and artists from Shakespeare to Ted Hughes, Rembrandt to Picasso. Its eternal freshness is haunted by an ancient idea: that a person's true nature is revealed when their physical shape is changed- the wolf-like man becomes a wolf, the obsessive spinner a spider.For this dazzling collection Philip Terry asked leading writers to take Ovid as a starting point and set their invention free. The results are startling, from Apollo and Phaeton transposed to a Dutch classroom to Diana and Actaeon in the rain of Nova Scotia. We find fables, grotesques and white-coated scientists; sports-cars, swans and shells; and even Ovid himself, high-spirited and unrepentant, speaking to us from beyond the grave.Challenging the very shape of the modern short story, Ovid Metamorphosed is a kaleidoscope of delights, scary, sexy, suggestive and profoundly entertaining.
Autorentext
Philip Terry
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'Buy it' The Times
'Ovid Metamorphosed is a bunch of short stories by a glittering modern cast. It's based on the tales retold by a brilliantly visual, witty, technically dazzling Italian poet who lived from 43BC to AD17...Ovid's winning mix of passion and compassion, sex and terror, love and grotesquerie - all recreated by the storytellers of Ovid Metamorphosed.' Independent
'Shameless, libertine, god-mocker, provoker of imperial displeasure, exile: there is much about Ovid the man to make him interesting to the modern mind, and even more about Ovid the poet. One of the most powerful stories is the one that stays closest to its source, M J Fitzgerald's version of the applaing tale of Tereus and Philomela, of the wicked king who raped his sister-in-law and cut out her tongue so she could not tell on him. Other writers use Ovid only as the launchpad for their own imaginative flight. Variously playful, sexy or frightening, each of the stories brings something fresh to the myth it retells.' Sunday Times
'This collection is a rare treat of indulgent erudtion.' Scotland on Sunday
'Technology changes, but human nature does not; which perhaps explains Ovid's continuing appeal...my own favourite from a strong field was the editor's 'Void', a nifty satire about the metamorphosis of a quiet little magazine into something Loaded.' Daily Telegraph
'Authors in this anthology pillage and plunder to splendid effect.' Scotsman